I WORLD WAR } 



ISSUESAND 
IDEALS 




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WORLD WAR ISSUES 
AND IDEALS 



READINGS IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 
AND LITERATURE 



EDITED BY 

MORRIS EDMUND SPEARE 

AND 

WALTER BLAKE NORRIS 

OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE UNITED STATES 
NAVAL ACADEMY 



GINN AND COMPANY 

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COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY MORRIS EDMUND SPEARE 

AND WALTER BLAKE NORRIS 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



MAR -5 i9i9 
CI.A512477 



INTRODUCTION 

Every generation needs to be addressed in its own language. — Bosanquet 

For youth whose education begins upon a momentous day in 
history, when vast and cataclysmic political changes must needs influ- 
ence educational methods as well, this book of essays, sketches, 
addresses, and state papers has been framed. Time-worn ideals and 
policies of every nation which had become permanent parts of their 
people's character and established tenets of their constitutional life 
have been lifted by a great historical crisis into the foreground. 
They are being subjected to a searching examination by a majority 
of humanity to prove that they are worth the millions of lives and the 
billions of wealth that have been spent in their defense. It is espe- 
cially necessary for American youth, the ideals of whose nation have 
been suddenly proposed for framing the basic principles of a world 
democracy, that they understand what is the best modern interpreta- 
tion of those ideals, and what are the ideals of those nations whom 
we are to-day influencing and with whom we have been allied. A 
new program for a cosmopolitan education must be hereafter adopted. 
We must henceforth cultivate — to use President Butler's admirable 
phrase — the quality of " international-mindedness." 

Experience of some years in instructing college youth, and at 
present young men in the United States Naval Academy, where, 
since the beginning of the World War, considerable attention has 
been given to the study of the underlying causes and the issues of 
that war, has bred confidence in the belief that in a book of the char- 
acter here presented may be found the most expedient means and 
the most effective method of furnishing, in a brief space of time and 
without the need of elaborate study, a comprehensive and well-rounded 
survey of those profound ideas whose significance now engages the 
attention of the entire thinking world. A further result of that experi- 
ence has bred the conviction that to latter-day youth, in these stirring 



iv WORLD WAR ISSUES AND IDEALS 

times, ideals and issues become living realities only in direct proportion 
to the respect which is awakened in them for the influence and 
the character of the writer or the speaker whose works they study. 
If a man has proved in the present his ability to influence events, 
if his discussions upon matters of national import show his ability to 
rephrase old traditions in terms of contemporary life, that man — 
rewarded with influence and recognized with leadership — is most 
likely to quicken and invigorate his youthful reader; far more so, 
indeed, than is the other writer or speaker who, while living a gen- 
eration before and enunciating principles which have since become 
classic examples of conduct, has not himself reached the fringe of 
this vital present day when the whole world has been battling 
for an Ideal. 

In emphasizing the need of making ideas living realities to 
American youth, the editors feel themselves in accord with certain 
pedagogical principles which have, in recent years, exerted a con- 
siderable influence upon introductory courses in our colleges and 
universities. Not the least important example of this influence is to 
be found in the program of the War Issues Course fashioned by the 
Committee on Education and Special Training for the purposes of 
the War Department. " The purpose of the War Issues Course," 
says that Committee, " is to enhance the morale of the members of 
the Corps by giving them an understanding of what the war is about 
and the supreme importance to civilization of the cause for which we 
are fighting." It was intended to make this War of Ideas a living 
reality to each man. The Committee therefore desired that, so far as 
the limited time of the course allowed, opportunity should be made 
for a discussion of the various points of view, the attitudes of life and 
of society, the philosophy which we have been called upon to defend, 
and the ideas against which we have fought. The student possessing a 
knowledge of the issues and the ideals at stake in the international situ- 
ation and giving some reflection to the various national characteristics 
and to the conflicts in the points of view — as these are expressed in 
the literature and the history of the various states — would then 
realize the full purpose and the international character of the War 
Issues Course. When one now considers the almost immeasurable 



INTRODUCTION v 

influence which the events of the last several years will have upon 
our education hereafter, and recalls also the particular influence 
which the Committee on Education and Special Training has had 
upon the college and university life in more recent days, one may 
well predict that however temporary may be the physical place of 
this particular group of educators, its intellectual influence will be 
obvious for many years to come. 

Altogether in sympathy with this influence, and in order to present 
the issues and the ideals which have been so significant in these 
momentous historical times in a form that is compact as well as un- 
qualifiedly authoritative, the editors have made this survey of national 
and international motives. It has been a peculiar privilege to be able 
to gather this collection of essays, speeches, and sketches from so 
many distinguished sources and from the writings of so various a 
group of statesmen and of men of letters. In spite of the variety 
of material, it is hoped that the arrangement here will suggest some 
sense of unity. The editors have sought, first, through the most 
distinguished spokesmen of the major warring nations, to present the 
conflicting issues of the war, the spirit which has guided their youth 
and their citizenry, and the ideals underlying the philosophy and the 
history of their respective governments. Then, the gains from the 
war as these are now possible to approximate, the relation of force 
to peace in a democracy, the conditions which may hereafter make 
for a permanent peace, the vision of the new Europe which shall 
henceforth arise — all these it has been thought desirable to reflect 
not alone from President Wilson's state papers but also from the 
writings of distinguished educators and scholars. To youthful readers, 
furthermore, and to nonparticipants generally, no great crisis of a 
political or social nature can be made a reality by an appeal to the 
intellect alone. Some reflection of the atmosphere of the war, pre- 
senting in its narrative and descriptive sketches a challenge to the 
imagination and the senses of the reader, has, therefore, also been 
thought worth including. Finally, since this book of selections is 
intended primarily for American youth, a reflection more or less com- 
prehensive is necessary to remind the student of certain permanent 
aims and ideas underlying American character and American politics. 



vi WORLD WAR ISSUES AND IDEALS 

For that reason a handful of recent interpretations concerned with 
American domestic matters and with American foreign policy has 
been included. These, showing America from within and from with- 
out, will lead the thoughtful person to gather for himself some conclu- 
sions with respect to those tendencies in our life which have brought 
the nation to its present consecration to the cause of democracy and 
international justice. 

In times like these, when all public matters are painted before 
the national consciousness in huge brush-strokes, there is offered to 
the college instructor and to the teacher generally a fortunate oppor- 
tunity to combine the study of great ideals and momentous acts with 
the work of composition. How significant the use of the vigorous 
writing of these stirring days is for the service of English-composi- 
tion courses may be seen not only in the adoption of the practice by 
many schools and colleges but also from the recommendation of its 
value by educators now directly serving the government. One need 
scarcely reassert — what these educators have already so well empha- 
sized — the supreme value of classroom discussions, arguments, 
reports, speeches, and written exercises in which there is evi- 
dence of the student's own reflection upon matters debated in the 
classroom, and proof that he has grasped the intent of the various 
ideals and ideas which this war of contrasts presents. It is for these 
objects that any effective introductory course must be planned. It is 
the hope of the editors that teachers of English may find within this 
large variety of material — the vigorous writing of distinguished men 
who almost invariably express themselves with force and with char- 
acter — not only ideas but also those models of literary style and 
facility of expression without which no course in English composition 
can be taught constructively. Among the many models here of 
undoubted literary excellence are speeches, essays, after-dinner 
addresses, orations, persuasive expositions, sketches, personal narra- 
tives, and magazine articles, written for different occasions and for a 
large variety of objects, a very large number of which — in the opin- 
ion of competent critics — must remain, both for the forcefulness of 
their ideas and for their intrinsic literary excellence, permanent 
models of prose composition. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Bearing in mind the compressed character which introductory 
courses must necessarily have, and the consequent need of selec- 
tions that can be mastered in not more than one or two assignments, 
the editors have purposely avoided abstruse ideas and the use of the 
extended selections so frequently found in books of this nature. In 
adapting, therefore, the various articles for present requirements, 
they have found it necessary, much as they would have desired not 
to do so, to omit parts of many articles. The larger gaps in these 
articles have been indicated, but in every case the author's ideas and 
his methods of presentation have been scrupulously preserved. To 
indicate every omission of material would have made the selections 
appear fragmentary, and lacking in that very unity which the editors 
feel each article still possesses. 

It is but a commonplace to observe that a book of selective read- 
ings must serve, at best, as a mere introduction to that major study 
of those historical backgrounds, philosophies, and literatures which 
together constitute the true and permanent material for an under- 
standing of the ideals and the national characteristics of peoples 
represented. With the requirements of effective teaching in mind, 
and the importance of opportunity for choice by the individual teacher 
before them, the editors have tried to present, within the space of a 
single volume, as large a variety of ideas and from as many points 
of view as possible. Life in a national institution during a period 
of great historical importance offers a unique opportunity for studying 
the most expedient way to meet the needs and requirements of young 
men who must be trained quickly but efficiently for public service. 
The editors entertain the hope that this compendious reflection of 
ideas affords at least one practical solution to the problem which 
such an exigency presents. The purpose in gathering this group of 
essays, sketches, and state papers will be completely fulfilled, how- 
ever, only when the articles in this collection shall prove of such sig- 
nificant value that the student, either of his own accord or through 
the stimulus of his instructors, shall be led to investigate the larger 
and more important works of the writers. When, by so doing, 
the American youth becomes awakened into a reflective, vigorous, 
and useful American citizen, may we then hope that the master 



viii WORLD WAR ISSUES AND IDEALS 

spirits of the present will furnish him with the inspiration for a study 
of the master spirits of the past. The editors have, for this reason, 
indicated in the biographical sketches the names of many of the better- 
known works of the various writers. In the references for collateral 
reading, to be found in the back of the book, are noted, further- 
more, short but comprehensive articles by writers and speakers of 
distinction, furnishing additional light upon the subjects discussed in 
this volume. These articles, as well as the standard reference books 
which quickly define terms not mentioned in the notes, can be found 
in any fair library. 

To the various authors and to the publishers, without whose 
sympathy and interest in the purpose of this book its creation would 
have been impossible, the editors desire to express their profound 
gratitude. For generous information in regard to the War Issues 
Course and the new conditions now existing in colleges and univer- 
sities, the editors would express their indebtedness to Professor Frank 
Aydelotte, the Director of the War Issues Course, and to those 

cooperating with him. 

M. E. S. . 
W. B. N. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION iii 

I. THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

A War for Democracy (April 2, 191 7). . Woodrow Wilson 3 

The Menace of Autocracy Elihu Root 1 2 

The Challenge and the Conflict . . David Lloyd George 21 

The Invasion of Belgium .... Von Bethmann-Hollweg 30 

/The Principles at War H. G. Dwight 31 

II. THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

The Role of the Infantry in Modern Warfare 

General Malleterre 49 

The French on the Somme " Odysseus " 59 

Dinant La Morte Camille David 68 

A Fight with German Airplanes Alan Bott 78 

Sims's Circus Herman Whitaker 90 

The Promise F?-ederic Boutet 100 

■ III. THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

The Spirit of French Youth Maurice Barres 107 

Diagnosis of the Englishman John Gahworthy 114 

Pro Patria Maurice Maeterlinck 120 

The Soul and Stones of Venice . . Gabriele d' 'Annunzio 1 26 

The American Flag Rend Viviani 132 

America offers her Troops John J. Pershing 136 

The Decision to make War . . . Friedrich von Bernhardi 137 

ix 



x WORLD WAR ISSUES AND IDEALS 

IV. DEMOCRATIC AND AUTOCRATIC IDEALS OF 
GOVERNMENT 

PAGE 

The Essentials of the American Constitution Elihu Root 143 

The Strength of American Democracy . . James Bryce 1 60 
The Attitude of the Individual in a Democracy 

Charles E. Hughes 1 70 

The Pale Shade Gilbert Murray 182 

The British Commonwealth of Nations . . Jan C. Smuts 196 

The Idea of Liberty in France .... Emile Boutroux 208 

A Clue to Russia Henry N. Brailsjord 2 1 5 

The German Ideal of the State . Heinrich von Treitschke 224 

The Army and National Unity . Heinrich von Treitschke 228 

V. THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

Gains from the War Charles W. Eliot 235 

Nationality and the New Europe . Archibald C. Coolidge 246 

Force and Peace He?iry Cabot Lodge 259 

A League to Enforce Peace . . . A. Lawrence Lowell 2j\ 

1-America's Terms of Peace (January 8, 191 8) Woodrow Wilson 287 
The Conditions of Permanent Peace (September 27, 191 8) 

Woodrow Wilson 295 

VI. FEATURES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

National Characteristics as Molding Public Opinion 

James Bryce # 305 
Contributions of the West to American Democracy 

Frederick J. Turner 314 

The Spirit of the Pacific Coast Josiah Royce 333 

Trans-National America Ra7idolph S. Botirne 343 

Democracy in Industry Lyman Abbott 352 

The American Novel Robert Herrick 363 

The Purpose and Spirit of the University George E. Vincent 379 

Military Character Yates Stirling 390 



CONTENTS xi 
VII. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

PAGE 

The International Mind .... Nicholas Murray Butler 403 
The Monroe Doctrine and the Evolution of Democracy 

Albert Shaw 408 

Our Latin-American Policy Richard Olney 417 

The Democratic Ideal in International Relationships 

Bainbridge Colby 427 

Tutoring the Philippines Charles H. Bre?it 43 1 

The Far-Eastern Problem J. O. P. Bland 441 

NOTES AND REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL READING 453 



WORLD WAR ISSUES AND IDEALS 

I 

THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 



A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY 

(Message to Congress, April 2, 19 17) 

Woodrow Wilson 

[Woodrow Wilson (1856- ), President of the United States since 
1913, was educated at Princeton, the University of Virginia, and at 
Johns Hopkins, and later taught history and political science at Bryn 
Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton. From 1902 to 1910 he served as Presi- 
dent of Princeton University. He was then elected Governor of New 
Jersey. His most important writings are " Congressional Government " 
(1885), "The State" (1889), "History of the American People" (1902), 
and a life of Washington. The best examples of his essays are "Ideals of 
America" {Atlantic Monthly for December, 1902) and "When a Man 
Comes to Himself" (191 5). The present selection is from his Message 
to Congress on April 2, 191 7, in which he recommended the declaration 
of war against Germany. Its sentence, "The world must be made safe 
for democracy," has become the rallying cry of all the nations fighting 
Germany, and best expresses the causes and underlying aims of American 
participation in the World War.] 

Gentlemen op the Congress: 

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session be- 
cause there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be 
made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor 
constitutionally permissible that I should assume the re- 
sponsibility of making. 

On the third of February last I officially laid before you the 
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment that on and after the first day of February it was 
its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity 
and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to 
approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the 
western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by 

3 



4 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had 
seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare 
earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial 
Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its 
undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to 
us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due 
warning would be given to all other vessels which its sub- 
marines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered 
or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were 
given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open 
t>oats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard 
enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance 
in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a cer- 
tain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has 
swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever 
their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their 
errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warn- 
ing and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, 
the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. 
Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely 
bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter 
were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed 
areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished 
by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the 
same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things 
would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto 
subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. 
International law had its origin in the attempt to set up 
some law which would be respected and observed upon the 
seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay 
the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage 
has that law been built up, with meager enough results, in- 
deed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, 
but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and 
conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right 



A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY 5 

the German Government has swept aside under the plea of 
retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons 
which it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible 
to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the 
winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the under- 
standings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of 
the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property in- 
volved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton 
and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, 
men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have 
always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been 
deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; 
the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The 
present German submarine warfare against commerce is a 
warfare against mankind. 

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been 
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us 
very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other 
neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed 
in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimina- 
tion. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must 
decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for 
ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a 
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our 
motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our 
motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the 
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of 
right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of 
February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our 
neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against 
unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against 
unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is 
impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when 
used as the German submarines have been used against mer- 
chant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their 



6 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen 
would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible 
craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence 
in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to 
destroy them before they have shown their own intention. 
They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The 
German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms 
at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even 
in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever 
before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is 
conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on 
our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law 
and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed 
neutrality is ineffectual enough at best ; in such circumstances 
and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual : 
it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent ; it 
is practically certain to draw us into the war without either 
the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one 
choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making : we will 
not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred 
rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. 
The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no com- 
mon wrongs ; they cut to the very roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical 
character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsi- 
bilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to 
what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Con- 
gress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment to be in fact nothing less than war against the gov- 
ernment and people of the United States; that it formally 
accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust 
upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put 
the country in a more thorough state of defense but also 
to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring 
the Government of the German Empire to terms and end 
the war. . . . 



A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY 7 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, 
let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world, 
what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has 
not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the 
unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe 
that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by 
them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had 
in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of 
January last ; the same that I had in mind when I addressed 
the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty-sixth 
of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the 
principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against 
selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really 
free and self -governed peoples of the world such a concert of 
purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance 
of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desir- 
able where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom 
of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies 
in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized 
force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will 
of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such 
circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it 
will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of re- 
sponsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations 
and their governments that are observed among the individual 
citizens of civilized states. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no 
feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. 
It was not upon their impulse that their government acted 
in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowl- 
edge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars 
used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when 
peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars 
were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of 
little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use 
their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations 



8 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course 
of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs 
which will give them an opportunity to strike and make con- 
quest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only 
under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. 
Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, 
it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out 
and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or 
behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and 
privileged class. They are happily impossible where public 
opinion commands and insists upon full information concern- 
ing all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained ex- 
cept by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic 
government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe 
its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of 
opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away ; the plottings of 
inner circles who could plan what they would and render ac- 
count to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. 
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor 
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind 
to any narrow interest of their own. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that the 
Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is 
that from the very outset of the present war it has rilled our 
unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government 
with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against 
our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, 
our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident 
that its spies were here even before the war began; and it 
is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in 
our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than 
once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dis- 
locating the industries of the country have been carried on 
at the instigation, with the support, and even under the per- 
sonal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government 



A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY 9 

accredited to the Government of the United States. Even 
in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we 
have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible 
upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in 
any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards 
us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves 
were), but only in the selfish designs of a government that 
did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they 
have played their part in serving to convince us at last that 
that government entertains no real friendship for us and 
means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. 
That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors 
the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City 
is eloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because 
we know that in such a government, following such methods, 
we can never have a friend ; and that in the presence of its 
organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know 
not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the 
democratic governments of the world. We are now about to 
accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and 
shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to 
check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, 
now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about 
them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and 
for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included ; 
for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of 
men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. 
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must 
be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. 
We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no 
dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material 
compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are 
but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall 
be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as 
the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. 



io THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish 
object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish 
to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, con- 
duct our operations as belligerents without passion and our- 
selves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right 
and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belliger- 
ents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without 
animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to 
bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in 
armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has 
thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and 
is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere 
friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so 
much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of 
mutual advantage between us, — however hard it may be 
for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken 
from our hearts. We have borne with their present govern- 
ment through all these bitter months because of that friend- 
ship, exercising a patience and forbearance which would 
otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have 
an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude 
and actions towards the millions of men and women of German 
birth and native sympathy who five amongst us and share our 
life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in 
fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the 
hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal 
Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or 
allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking 
and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and 
purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with 
with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head 
at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance 
except from a lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the 
Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. 



A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY n 

There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice 
ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful 
people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all 
wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the 
right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the 
things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, — for 
democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to 
have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and 
liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right 
by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and 
safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. 
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has come when America 
is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles 
that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has 
treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. 



THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY 1 
Elihu Root 

[Elihu Root (1845- ) was educated at Hamilton College, and is 
one of the foremost American statesmen of to-day. His chief public serv- 
ices have been as Secretary of War under Presidents McKinley and 
Roosevelt, Secretary of State under President Roosevelt, and Senator 
from New York from 1909 to 191 5. He was a member of the Hague Tri- 
bunal in 1 910 and has rendered important services to the settlement of 
international problems. In 191 2 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 
The present selection is the larger part of his Presidential Address at the 
Eleventh Meeting of the American Society of International Law in 
Washington, April 26, 191 7. As an exposition of the phrase "The world 
must be made safe for democracy" and a justification of the entrance of 
the United States into the World War it stands second only to the April 
2d Message.] 

The greatest change in the conditions of national life during 
the past century has been in the advance and spread of demo- 
cratic government, and the correlative decrease in the extent 
and power of autocratic and dynastic governments. It is im- 
possible to regard the advance of democracy as being merely 
local or temporary. It has been the result of long-continued 
and persistent progress, varying in different countries accord- 
ing to the character of the people and the nature of the ob- 
stacles to be overcome, but, in its nature, essentially the same 
in all countries. 

England, in her steady-going, undemonstrative way, has 
moved along from government by a king claiming divine 
right to a Commons representing popular right through the 
revolution of 1688, which established the nation's right to 

1 From " The Effect of Democracy on International Law," International 
Conciliation, August, 191 7. Reprinted by permission. 



THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY . 13 

choose its king, through that civil war over the rights of 
British subjects known as the American Revolution, through 
chartism and Catholic emancipation, the Reform Bill of 1832, 
the franchise extension of 1867, the abandonment of the king's 
veto power, and the establishment of the Commons' right to 
pass bills over the rejection of the House of Lords. 

France, in her own different way, with much action and re- 
action, traveled towards the same goal through the States 
General and the Constituent Assembly, through the Reign of 
Terror, and her amazing defense of the first Republic against 
all Europe, through the heroic surgery of Napoleon's career, 
the Bourbon restoration, the assertion of her right to choose 
her own king in 1830, and the assertion of her right to dispense 
with a king in 1848, the plebiscite and the second Empire, the 
Commune and the third Republic, which has grown in stability 
and capacity for popular government until the steadiness and 
self-control and noble devotion of the French people under 
suffering and sacrifice have come to be one of the amazing 
revelations of these terrible years. 

Italy, struggling out of the control of a multitude of petty 
tyrants sustained by foreign influence, established her newly 
won unity and independence upon the basis of representative 
parliamentary government. 

Spain has regained and strengthened the constitution of 
which Ferdinand VII and the Holy Alliance deprived her. 

Throughout the greater part of the world constitutions 
have become the order of the day. Switzerland, Belgium, 
Holland, Portugal, all Scandinavia, all Latin-America, have 
established their governments upon constitutional bases. 
Japan, emerging from her military feudalism, makes her entry 
into the community of civilized nations under a constitutional 
government. China, throwing off the domination of the 
Manchu, is striving to accustom her long-suffering and sub- 
missive millions to the idea of constitutional right. The great 
self-governing British Dominions, bound to the Mother 
Country only by ties of tradition and sentiment, have shown 



i 4 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

that free democracies can respond to moral forces with a 
splendid power of loyalty that no coercion could inspire. 
And now, Russia, extirpating the government which has been 
for modern times the typical illustration of autocracy, is en- 
gaged in establishing the new self-control of that vast Empire 
upon the basis of universal suffrage and republican institutions. 

The political conception of control from above by monarchs 
exercising divine right is not merely disputed by philosophers 
and reformers ; it has faded and grown dim in the minds of 
the millions of men in the civilized nations, and in its place 
has spread throughout the world the political conception of 
constitutional government exercising control by authority of 
the peoples who are governed. 

The persistence and extent of this change in the political 
and social conditions of national life forbid the idea that it 
is the child of individual minds or local provocations or tem- 
porary causes, and distinguish it as one of those great and 
fundamental movements of the human mind which no power 
can control, and which run their course inevitably to the end 
in an unknown future. The existence and assured continuance 
of this process of development of democracy is the great fact 
forecasting the future conditions under which the effort to 
reinstate the law of nations is to be made. 

What is to be the effect of this change in conditions upon 
the possibility of making international law relatively perma- 
nent? In considering this question, some facts can be clearly 
perceived. 

The substitution of a democratic for an autocratic regime 
removes the chief force which in the past has led nations to 
break over and destroy the limitations of law; that is, the 
prosecution of dynastic policies. Such policies in general 
have in view the increase of territory, of dominion, of power, 
for the ruler and the military class or aristocracy which sur- 
rounds the ruler and supports his throne. The benefit of the 
people who are ruled is only incidentally — if at all — ■ 



THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY 15 

involved. If we turn back to the causes which destroyed the 
peace of the world under the dispositions made by the Treaty 
of Westphalia, the mind naturally rests on the War of the 
Spanish Succession, which drenched Europe in blood through 
the first decade of the eighteenth century, and ended in the 
Treaty of Utrecht only when Louis XIV was reduced to 
exhaustion. What was that about? Nothing more or less 
than the question what royal house should have its power 
increased by a marriage that would ultimately enable it to 
control the territory and wield the power of Spain for its own 
aggrandizement. The interests of the people of Spain or the 
people of France or of any other country furnished no part of 
the motive power. 

Underlying the whole age-long struggle to maintain the 
balance of power in Europe has been the assumption that 
increased power would be used for aggression and to secure 
further increase of power by the conquest of territory and 
the subjection of its inhabitants ; and the common experience 
of mankind under the autocratic system of government by 
divine right has justified the assumption. It was a perfect 
understanding of this characteristic of autocratic government 
that inspired the words of President Monroe's famous declara- 
tion: "We should consider any attempt on their part (the 
European powers) to extend their system to any portion of 
this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." 

Against the deep and settled purpose of a ruling family or a 
ruling aristocratic class to enlarge its power, continuing from 
generation to generation, usually concealed until the favorable 
moment for action comes, always justified or excused by 
specious pretexts, the advocates of peace, or justice, or hu- 
manity, or law, are helpless. All other causes of war can be 
reached. International misunderstandings can be explained 
away. Dislikes and suspicions can be dissipated by inter- 
course, and better knowledge, and courtesy, and kindness. 
Considerate justice can prevent real causes of war. Rules 
of action to prevent controversy may be agreed upon by 



1 6 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

diplomacy and conferences and congresses. Honest differences 
as to national rights and duties may be settled by arbitration, 
or judicial decision; but, against a deep and persistent pur- 
pose by the rulers of a great nation to take away the territory 
of others, or to reduce others to subjection for their own 
aggrandizement, all these expedients are of no avail. The 
Congresses of Westphalia, of Vienna, of Berlin, and a multitude 
of others less conspicuous, have sought to curb the evil through 
setting limits upon power by treaty. They have all failed. 
The Peace Conferences at The Hague have sought to diminish 
the evil by universal agreement upon rules of action. The 
rules and the treaties have become "scraps of paper." 

The progress of democracy, however, is dealing with the 
problem by destroying the type of government which has 
shown itself incapable of maintaining respect for law and 
justice and resisting the temptations of ambition; and by 
substituting a new form of government, which in its nature 
is incapable of proceeding by the same methods, and neces- 
sarily responds to different motives and pursues different 
objects from the old autocratic offenders. Only when that 
task has been substantially accomplished will the advocates 
of law among nations be free from the inheritance of former 
failure. There will then be a new field open for a new trial, 
doubtless full of difficulties of its own, but of fair hope and 
possibilities of success. 

Self-governing democracies are indeed liable to commit 
great wrongs. The peoples who govern themselves frequently 
misunderstand their international rights, and ignore their 
international duties. They are often swayed by prejudice, 
and blinded by passion. They are swift to decide in their 
own favor the most difficult questions upon which they are 
totally ignorant. They are apt to applaud the jingo politician 
who courts popularity by public insult to a friendly people, 
and to condemn the statesman who modifies extreme demands 
through the concessions required by just consideration for the 



THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY 17 

rights of others. All these faults, however, are open and 
known to the whole world. The opinions and motives from 
which they proceed, the real causes of error, can be reached 
by reason, by appeal to better instincts, by public discussion, 
by the ascertainment and dissemination of the true facts. 

There are some necessary features of democratic self- 
government which tend towards the progressive reduction 
of tendencies to international wrong-doing. One is that de- 
mocracies are absolutely dependent for their existence upon 
the preservation of law. Autocracies can give commands and 
enforce them. Rules of action are a convenience, not a neces- 
sity for them. On the other hand, the only atmosphere in 
which a democracy can live between the danger of autocracy 
on one side and the danger of anarchy on the other is the 
atmosphere of law. Respect for law is the essential condition 
of its existence ; and, as in a democracy the law is an expres- 
sion of the people's own will, self-respect and personal pride 
and patriotism demand its observance. An essential distinc- 
tion between democracy and autocracy is that while the 
government of an autocracy is superior to the law, the govern- 
ment of a democracy is subject to the law. The conception of 
an international law binding upon the governments of the 
world is, therefore, natural to the people of a democracy, 
and any violation of that law which they themselves have 
joined in prescribing is received with disapproval, if not with 
resentment. This is well illustrated by the attitude of the 
people of the separate states of the American Union toward 
the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States pass- 
ing upon the exercise of power by state governments. Physical 
force has never been used to compel conformity to those de- 
cisions. Yet, the democratic people of the United States have 
answered Jefferson's contemptuous remark, "John Marshall 
has made his decision; now let him enforce it." The answer 
is that it is the will of self-governed democracy to obey the 
law which it has itself established, and the decisions of the 
Great Tribunal which declares the law controlling state action 



1 8 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

will be accepted and observed by common consent and en- 
forced by the power of public opinion. 

Another necessary feature of democratic government is that 
the exercise of the power of popular self-government is a con- 
tinual training of all citizens in the very qualities which are 
necessary for the maintenance of law between nations. Demo- 
cratic government cannot be carried on except by a people 
who acquire the habit of seeking true information about facts, 
of discussing questions of right and wrong, of interest, and 
of possible consequences, who have kindly consideration for 
opposing opinions, and a tolerant attitude towards those who 
differ. The longer a democracy preserves itself through the 
exercise of these qualities, the better adapted it is to apply the 
same methods in the conduct of its international business, and 
the result is a continually increasing certainty that international 
law will be observed in a community of democratic nations. 

The most important difference, however, between the two 
forms of government is that democracies are incapable of 
holding or executing those sinister policies of ambition which 
are beyond the reach of argument and the control of law. A 
democracy cannot hold such policies, because the open and 
public avowal and discussion which must precede their adop- 
tion by a democracy is destructive of them; and it cannot 
execute such policies, because it uniformly lacks the kind of 
disciplined efficiency necessary to diplomatic and military 
affirmatives. 

This characteristic of popular governments is well illus- 
trated by the hundred years of peace which we are all rather 
proud of preserving throughout the 3000 miles of boundary 
between Canada and the United States without fortifications 
or ships of war or armies. There have been many occasions 
when the tempers of the men on either side of the line were 
sorely tried. The disputes regarding the Northeastern Bound- 
ary, the Oregon Boundary, the Alaska Boundary, were acute ; 
the affair of the Caroline on the Niagara River, the Fenian 
Raid upon Lake Champlain, the enforcement of the Fisheries 



THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY 19 

regulations, were exasperating and serious, but upon neither 
side of the boundary did democracy harbor those sinister 
designs of aggrandizement and ambition which have char- 
acterized the autocratic governments of the world. On neither 
side was there suspicion of any such designs in the democracy 
across the border. The purpose of each nation was merely 
to stand up for its own rights, and so reason has always con- 
trolled, and every question has been settled by fair agree- 
ment, or by arbitral decision ; and, finally, for the past eight 
years a permanent International Commission with judicial 
powers has disposed of the controversies arising between the 
citizens of the two countries along the border as unobtrusively 
and naturally as if the questions arose between citizens of 
Maryland and Virginia. Such has been the course of events, 
not because of any great design or far-seeing plan, but because 
it is the natural working of democratic government. 

The incapacity of democracies to maintain policies of aggres- 
sion may be fairly inferred from the extreme reluctance with 
which they incur the expense and make the sacrifices necessary 
for defense. Cherishing no secret designs of aggression them- 
selves, they find it difficult to believe in the existence of such 
designs on the part of other nations. Only imminent and 
deadly peril awakens them to activity. It was this obstinate 
confidence in the peaceable intentions of all mankind which 
met Lord Roberts (honored, trusted, and beloved as he was) 
when long before the present war he vainly sought to awaken 
the people of England to the danger that he saw so plainly 
in Germany's stupendous preparation for conquest. It is well 
known that when the war came France was almost upon the 
verge of diminishing her army by a reduction in the years of 
service. In our own country a great people, virile, fearless, 
and loyal, have remained indifferent to all the voices crying 
in the wilderness for preparation, because the American people 
could not be made to believe that anything was going to happen 
inconsistent with the existence everywhere of those peaceful 
purposes of which they themselves were conscious. 



20 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

There is a radical incompatibility between popular self- 
government and continuous military discipline, for military 
control is in itself despotic. As compared with military 
autocracies, the normal condition of democracies is a condi- 
tion of inferior military efficiency. This invariable character- 
istic of democracy leaves it no option in its treatment of 
autocracy. The two kinds of government cannot live perma- 
nently side by side. So long as military autocracy continues, 
democracy is not safe from attacks, which are certain to come 
sometime, and certain to find it unprepared. The conflict is 
inevitable and universal; and it is d Voutrance. To be safe, 
democracy must kill its enemy when it can and where it can. 
The world cannot be half democratic and half autocratic. 
It must be all democratic or all Prussian. There can be no 
compromise. If it is all Prussian, there can be no real inter- 
national law. If it is all democratic, international law honored 
and observed may well be expected as a natural development 
of the principles which make democratic self-government 
possible. 

The democracies of the world are gathered about the last 
stronghold of autocracy, and engaged in the conflict thrust 
upon them by dynastic policy pursuing the ambition of rulers 
under claim of divine right for their own aggrandizement, 
their own glory, without regard to law, or justice, or faith. 
The issue to-day and to-morrow may seem uncertain, but the 
end is not uncertain. No one knows how soon the end will 
come, or what dreadful suffering and sacrifice may stand 
between ; but the progress of the great world movement that 
has doomed autocracy cannot be turned back, or defeated. 

That is the great peace movement. 

There the millions who have learned under freedom to hope 
and aspire for better things are paying the price that the 
peaceful peoples of the earth may live in security under the 
protection of law based upon all-embracing justice and supreme 
in the community of nations. 



THE CHALLENGE AND THE CONFLICT 
David Lloyd George 

[David Lloyd George (1863- ) was born in Manchester, England, 
but spent most of his early life in Wales, the country of his parents. In 
1890 he entered Parliament and has been a Cabinet minister since 1905. 
In 1909 as Chancellor of the Exchequer he introduced the budget which 
with its income taxes and other measures bore so heavily upon the landed 
and wealthy classes that it was rejected by the House of Lords — an act 
which ultimately led to the abolition of the Lords' veto. He became 
Prime Minister in 1916 with a cabinet formed of representatives of all 
parties, and has reorganized the British cabinet system to simplify the 
prosecution of the war. He is noted for his remarkable effectiveness as a 
public speaker and for a truly Celtic power of emotional appeal. The 
present selection is taken from a speech generally entitled "When the War 
Will End," delivered at Glasgow on June 29, 191 7, and is noteworthy for 
its presentation of the underlying issues of the World War in terms that 
appeal to the ordinary man.] 

Never did men stand more in need of sympathy and sup- 
port of cooperation than the men who are guiding the fate 
of nations at this hour. In all lands we have been called 
to the helm in a raging tornado, the most destructive that 
has ever swept over the world on land or sea. Britain so 
far has weathered the storm. The hurricane is not yet over, 
and it will need all the efforts, all the skill, all the patience, 
all the courage, all the endurance of all on board to steer 
the country through without foundering in the angry deep. 
But with the cooperation of everybody we will guide it through 
once again. It is a satisfaction for Britain in these terrible 
times that no share of the responsibility for these events 
rests on her. She is not the Jonah in this storm. The part 
taken by our country in this conflict, in its origin, and in its 
conduct, has been as honorable and chivalrous as any part 



22 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

ever taken in any country in any operation. We might 
imagine from declarations which were made by the Germans, 
aye ! and even by a few people in this country, who are con- 
stantly referring to our German comrades, that this terrible 
war was wantonly and wickedly provoked by England — 
never Scotland — never Wales — and never Ireland. .Wan- 
tonly provoked by England to increase her possessions, and 
to destroy the influence, the power, and the prosperity of 
a dangerous rival. 

There never was a more foolish travesty of the actual 
facts. It happened three years ago, or less, but there have 
been so many bewildering events crowded into those inter- 
vening years that some people might have forgotten, per- 
haps, some of the essential facts, and it is essential that 
we should now and again restate them, not merely to refute 
the calumniators of our native land, but in order to sustain 
the hearts of her people by the unswerving conviction that 
no part of the guilt of this terrible bloodshed rests on the 
conscience of their native land. What are the main facts? 
There were six countries which entered the war at the begin- 
ning. Britain was last, and not the first. Before she entered 
the war Britain made every effort to avoid it; begged, sup- 
plicated, and entreated that there should be no conflict. 
I was a member of the Cabinet at the time, and I remember 
the earnest endeavors we made to persuade Germany and 
Austria not to precipitate Europe into this welter of blood. 
We begged them to summon a European conference to con- 
sider. Had that conference met, arguments against pro- 
voking such a catastrophe were so overwhelming that there 
would never have been a war. Germany knew that, so she 
rejected the conference, although Austria was prepared to 
accept it. She suddenly declared war, and yet we are the 
people who wantonly provoked this war, in order to attack 
Germany. We begged Germany not to attack Belgium, and 
produced a treaty, signed by the King of Prussia, as well 
as the King of England, pledging himself to protect Belgium 



THE CHALLENGE AND THE CONFLICT 23 

against an invader, and we said, "If you invade Belgium, we 
shall have no alternative but to defend it." The enemy 
invaded Belgium, and now they say, "Why, forsooth, you, 
England, provoked this war." It is not quite the story of 
the wolf and the lamb. I will tell you why — because Ger- 
many expected to find a lamb and found a lion. So much for 
our responsibility for war, and it is necessary that the facts 
should be stated and restated, because I want us to carry 
on this war with a pure, clear conscience to the end. 



Revolution is a fever brought about by the constant 
and reckless disregard of the laws of health in the govern- 
ment of a country. Whilst it is on, the strength of a country 
is diverted to the internal conflict which is raging in its blood, 
and it is naturally not so effective for external use during the 
period. The patient takes some time to recover his normal 
temperature, but when he begins to recover, if his constitu- 
tion is good — and the Russian nation has as fine a consti- 
tution as any nation ever possessed in all the essence of fine 
manhood — then he will regain strength at a bound, and 
will be mightier and more formidable than ever. 

That is the case in Russia : although this distraction has 
had the effect of postponing complete victory, it has made 
victory more sure than ever, more complete than ever. What 
is more important, it has made surer than ever the quality 
of the victory we will gain. What do I mean when I say it 
has insured a better quality of victory, because that is im- 
portant? I will tell you why. There were many of us whose 
hearts were filled with gloomy anxiety when we contemplated 
all the prospects of a great peace conference summoned to 
settle the future of democracy with one of the most powerful 
partners at that table the most reactionary autocracy in the 
world. I remember very well discussing the very point with 
one of the greatest of the French statesmen, and he had great 
misgivings as to what would happen now that Russia is 



24 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

unshackled. Russia is free, and the representatives of Russia 
at the Peace Congress will be representatives of a free people, 
righting for freedom, arranging the future of democracy on 
the lines of freedom. That is what I mean when I say that 
not merely will the Russian revolution insure more complete 
victory, it will insure victory of the highest and more exalted 
than any one could have contemplated before. 



I wanted to say something about the terms of peace. 
When you get your victory, what use are you going to make 
of it? There are people asking when are you going to bring 
this war to an end, how are you going to bring it to an end, 
and when you have brought it to an end, what end do you 
want for it? All of them justifiable questions, and all of 
them demanding reasonable answer, and I propose to make 
my contribution to the solution of these direct and search- 
ing questions. In my judgment this war will come to an end 
when the Allied Powers have reached the aims which they 
set out to attain when they accepted the challenge thrown 
down by Germany to civilization. 

These aims were set out recently by President Wilson with 
his unrivaled gift of succinct and trenchant speech. As soon 
as these objectives are reached, and guaranteed, this war 
ought to come to an end. But if it comes to an end a single 
hour before, it will be the greatest disaster that has ever 
befallen mankind. I hear there are people going about the 
country saying, " Germany is prepared to give you peace 
now. An honorable peace, and a satisfactory peace." 

Well, you can have peace at that price, but do you know 
what it would be? The old policy of buying out the Goth, 
who eventually destroyed the Roman Empire and threw 
Europe into the ages of barbarous cruelties. Believe me, 
that policy had its undoubted advantages. I can hear the 
echoes of the pacifists of the day in the Roman forum 
dwelling on the fact that if they only buy out the Goths at 



THE CHALLENGE AND THE CONFLICT 25 

a small price compared with the war, a little territory, and 
a little cash, the Roman youth would be spared the terrors 
of war and their parents the anxieties of war. People of 
all ranks and classes would avoid the hardships of war, and 
be able to continue their lives of comfort and luxury and 
ease. The pacifists of the day, when they made their bar- 
gain, thought that they avoided bloodshed. They had 
only transmitted it to the children. You remember what 
the Roman Senator said of one of these bargains, which 
gave peace for the moment to the Roman Empire. He 
said, "This is not peace; it is a pact of servitude." So it 
was. If they had bravely and wisely faced their responsi- 
bilities, what would have happened? Rome would have 
thrown off its sloth, as Britain did in 1914. Its blood cleansed 
by sacrifice, the old vitality and the old virility of the race 
would have been restored. Rome would have been grander 
and nobler than ever, its rule would have been more benefi- 
cent, and the world would have been spared centuries of 
cruelties and chaos. You can have peace to-day, but it would 
be on a basis that history has demonstrated to be fatal to 
the lives of any great Commonwealth that purchased tran- 
quillity upon it. 

I am told that if you are prepared to make peace now, 
Germany, for instance, would restore the independence of 
Belgium. But who says so? There are men in this country 
who profess to know a good deal about the intentions of 
German statesmen. No German statesman has ever said 
they would restore the independence of Belgium. The Ger- 
man Chancellor came very near it, but the Junkers forth- 
with fell upon him, and he was boxed soundly on the ear 
by the mailed fist, and he has never repeated the offense. 
He said: "We will restore Belgium to its people, but it must 
form part of the economic system of Germany, of the mili- 
tary and naval defense of Germany. We must have some 
control over its ports." That is the sort of independence 
Edward I offered to Scotland, and after a good many years 



26 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

Scotland gave its final answer at Bannockburn. That is 
not independence ; that is vassalage. 

Then there comes the doctrine of the status quo, no annexa- 
tion, no indemnities. No German speeches are explicit on 
that, but what does indemnity mean? A man breaks into 
your house, turns you out for three years, murders some of 
the inmates, and is guilty of every infamy that barbarism 
can suggest, occupies your premises for three years, and turns 
round and says when the law is beginning to go against him, 
"Take your house, I am willing to give you the status quo, 
I will not even charge you any indemnity." But, you say, 
even a pacifist, if it were done in his house, would turn round 
and say: "You have wronged me. You have occupied these 
premises for three years. You have done me an injury. You 
must pay compensation. There is not a law in the civilized 
world that does not make it an essential part of justice that 
you should do so." And he says, in a lofty way, "My prin- 
ciple is no indemnity." It is not a question of being vindic- 
tive, it is not a question of pursuing revenge. Indemnity is 
ah essential part of the mechanism of civilization in every 
land and clime. Otherwise what guarantee have you against 
a repetition, against the man remaining there for three years 
more, and when it has got rather too hot for him, clearing 
out and paying neither rent nor compensation? Why, every 
man in this land would be at the mercy of every strong- 
handed villain. There is no law, there is no civilization in 
that. You could not keep the community together. We are 
fighting for the essential principles of civilization, and unless 
we insist upon it we shall not have vindicated what is the 
basis of right in every land. 



No one wishes to dictate to the German people the form 
of government under which they choose to live. That is 
a matter entirely for themselves, but it is right we should 
say we could enter into negotiations with a free Government 



THE CHALLENGE AND THE CONFLICT 27 

in Germany with a different attitude of mind, a different 
temper, a different spirit, with less suspicion, with more confi- 
dence than we could with a Government whom we knew to 
be dominated by the aggressive and arrogant spirit of Prus- 
sian militarism. And the Allied Governments would, in my 
judgment, be acting wisely if they drew that distinction in 
their general attitude in a discussion of the terms of peace. 
The fatal error committed by Prussia in 1870 — ■ the error 
which undoubtedly proves her bad faith at that time — was 
that when she entered the war, she was righting against a 
restless military empire, dominated largely by military ideals, 
with military traditions behind them. When that empire 
fell, it would have been wisdom of Germany to recognize the 
change immediately. Democratic France was a more sure 
guarantee for the case of Germany than the fortress of Metz 
or the walled ramparts of Strasburg. If Prussia had taken 
that view, European history would have taken a different 
course. It would have acted on the generous spirit of the 
great people who dwell in France, it would have reacted 
on the spirit and policy of Germany herself. Europe would 
have reaped a harvest of peace and goodwill amongst men 
instead of garnering, as she does now, a whirlwind of hate, 
rage, and human savagery. I trust that the Allied Govern- 
ments will take that as an element in their whole discussion 
of the terms and prospects of peace. 

I have one thing to say in conclusion. In pursuing this 
conflict we must think not merely of the present but of the 
future of the world. We are settling questions which will 
affect the lives of people not merely in this generation, but 
for countless generations to come. In France last year I 
went along the French front, and I met one of the finest 
generals in the French Army, General Gouroud, and he 
said: "One of my soldiers a few days ago did one of the most 
gallant and daring things any soldier has ever done. It 
was reckless, but he managed to come back alive, and some 
one said to him, 'Why did you do that? You have got four 



28 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

children, and you might have left it to one of the young 
fellows in the army. What would have happened to your 
children?' And his answer was, 'It was for them I 
did it.'" 

This war involves issues upon which will depend the lives 
of our children and our children's children. Sometimes in 
the course of human events challenges are hurled from the 
unknown amongst the sons and daughters of men. Upon 
the answer which is given to these challenges, and upon 
the heroism with which the answer is sustained, depends the 
question whether the world would be better or whether 
the world would be worse for ages to come. These challenges 
end in terrible conflicts which bring wretchedness, misery, 
bloodshed, martyrdom in all its myriad forms to the world, 
and if you look at the pages of history, these conflicts stand 
out like great mountain ranges, such as you have in Scotland 
— scenes of destruction, of vast conflicts, scarred by the vol- 
canoes which threw them up and drawing blessings from the 
heavens that fertilize the valleys and the plains perennially 
far beyond the horizon of the highest peaks. You had such 
a conflict in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies of the great fight for the rights of men to worship God 
according to their consciences. The Scottish Covenanters 
might have given this answer to the challenge. They might 
have said, "Let there be peace in our time, O Lord." They 
might have said: "Why should we suffer for privileges that 
even our fathers never enjoyed? If we win, we may never 
live to enjoy the fruits of it, but we have got to face priva- 
tions, unspeakable torture, the destruction of our homes, 
the scattering of our families, shameless death. Let there 
be peace." Scotland would have been a thing of no account 
among the nations. Its hills would have bowed their heads 
in shame for the people they sheltered. But the answer of 
the old Scottish Covenanter, the old dying Covenanter Cargill, 
rings down the ages, even to us at this fateful hour, "Satisfy 
your conscience, and go forward." 



THE CHALLENGE AND THE CONFLICT 29 

That was the answer. That conflict was fought in the val- 
leys of Scotland and the rich plains and market-places of 
England, where candles were lighted which will never be 
put out, and on the plains, too, of Bohemia, and on the 
fields and walled cities of Germany. There Europe suf- 
fered unendurable agonies and miseries, but at the end of 
it humanity took a great leap forward towards the dawn. 
Then came a conflict of the eighteenth century, the great 
fight for the right of men as men, and Europe again was 
drenched with blood. But at the end of it the peasantry 
were free, and democracy became a reality. Now we are 
faced with the greatest and grimmest struggle of all — ■ liberty, 
equality, fraternity, not amongst men but amongst nations ; 
great, yea small ; powerful, yea weak ; exalted, yea humblest ; 
Germany, yea Belgium ; Austria, yea Serbia — equality, 
fraternity, amongst peoples as well as amongst men. That 
is the challenge which has been thrown to us. 

Europe is again drenched with the blood of its bravest 
and best, but do not forget these are the great successions 
of hallowed causes. They are the stations of the cross on 
the road to the emancipation of mankind. Let us endure 
as our fathers did. Every birth is an agony, and the new 
world is born out of the agony of the old world. My appeal 
to the people of this country, and, if my appeal can reach, 
beyond it is this — that we should continue to fight for the 
great goal of international right and international justice, so 
that never again shall brute force sit on the throne of justice, 
nor barbaric strength wield the scepter of right. 



THE INVASION OF BELGIUM 
Theobald T. F. A. von Bethmann-Hollweg 

[Theobald Theodore Frederic Alfred von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856- 

), German Chancellor at the outbreak of the World War in 1914, 

was born in the province of Brandenburg. After a university education 
he entered the Prussian civil service and became from early manhood 
the friend and adviser of William II. In 1909 he succeeded Prince von 
Biilow as German Chancellor, a position he held until 191 7. His speech 
in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, from which the following selection 
is an extract, is one of the frankest and clearest expressions of German 
thought in regard to international obligations.] 

Gentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity, and necessity 
knows no law ! Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and 
perhaps are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is con- 
trary to the dictates of international law. It is true that the 
French Government has declared at Brussels that France is 
willing to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as her 
opponent respects it. We know, however, that France stood 
ready for the invasion. France could wait, but we could not 
wait. A French movement upon our flank upon the Lower 
Rhine might have been disastrous. So we were compelled to 
override the just protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian 
Governments. The wrong — I speak openly — that we are 
committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our 
military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened, 
as we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, 
can have only one thought — how to hack his way through. 



30 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 1 
H. G. Dwight 

[Harrison G. Dwight (1875- ) is an American who has spent 
much of his life in Turkey and Persia and belongs to a family which has 
been engaged in missionary work in the Ottoman Empire for several gen- 
erations. At the present time he is perhaps the best authority in the 
United States on the life of the Near East. His best books are "Con- 
stantinople, Old and New" (1915) and "Persian Miniatures" (1917). 
This article, from which a number of the later paragraphs have been 
omitted, shows the natural reaction of the American mind intimately 
acquainted with the oppressed nationalities of the Near East to the "old 
imperialism of conquest."] 

II n'y a rien de plus grand qu'une force devastatrice qui se regie. 

Andre Suares; "Sur La Vie" 

To many of those for whom history is more than a stirring 
of dry bones, who have — at least in a geographical sense — 
seen something of the world, or whose destiny has given them 
to live in countries other than their own, nothing can be more 
incomprehensible than the pacifist movement in America. 
The present writer by no means proposes to go on record as 
standing for the continuance of hostile relations between 
peoples, rather than that state of harmony out of which alone 
can come the happiest fruits of civilization. But the doctrine 
of peace at any price is one which he confesses himself unable 
to understand. He cannot but marvel how that ideal of a 
Sybaritic ease cari prevail, even in the most timid mind, 
above the sterner and loftier one implied by a war of national 
defense. And least of all can he account for the fact that a 
politician of the experience of Mr. Bryan, who may be all his 
critics claim, but who nevertheless was permitted to make his 

1 From Unpopular Review, April, 1916. Copyright, Henry Holt & Co. 

3i 



32 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

way to one of the highest public posts in a great country, 
that an educator such as Dr. David Starr Jordan, that a 
successful and presumably not illiterate man of affairs like 
Mr. Henry Ford, that a woman of the personality and intelli- 
gence of Miss Jane Addams, who are four very conspicuous 
representatives of a considerable public, can seriously believe, 
as apparently they do, that there is no reason for the war 
which is now shaking the world, and that its immediate dis- 
continuance could only further the happiness of all concerned. 
What, the pacifists ask, is the war about? What common 
cause could unite such totally different civilizations as the 
English, the Japanese, the Latin, and the Slav, and as the 
Teuton and the Turkish, and array one group against the 
other ? The question is an extremely pertinent one — and 
extremely complex. So many personal sympathies are in- 
volved in it, so many selfish interests, so many political 
loyalties, so many inconsistencies of all kinds, that no one 
can hope to dispose of them one by one and emerge triumphant 
with a shining theory which pacifist and belligerent alike will 
at once recognize as incontrovertible. Yet to more than one 
witness of that terrific conflict it seems obvious that a cause 
is at stake which is dearer than life. It also seems obvious 
enough that the forces for and against that cause had grown 
into an antagonism too acute for them to go on living at 
peace on the same continent. And I venture to add that if 
this war does not result in the victory of that cause, other 
wars must inevitably follow until men finally acknowledge 
the reasonableness and justice of the cause. 

In a quarter of the globe where the modest locution " God's 
country" is understood among friends to refer to certain terri- 
tories between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer, 
separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the word empire 
is one to be used with circumspection. And it is true that 
certain ideas implied by that word flourish more luxuriantly 
in other soils than ours. But so far as the word connotes a 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 33 

general idea of preponderance, rather than a particular one of 
hereditary monarchy, the most democratic American is often 
at one with the most autocratic Asian or European. While the 
American's opinion of imperial regalia is emphatic enough, he 
is less decided when it comes to offering the benefits of mili- 
tary protection to dark and distant peoples, or those of a 
great commercial or political monopoly to his own; and he 
speaks with perfect equanimity of capturing the trade of a 
continent, or of subverting its religion. He willingly enter- 
tains, furthermore, the possibility that his language may in 
time supplant certain others. Nor have there lacked Ameri- 
cans who looked forward to a day when their country should 
so extend its sway as to rule the entire continent, if not the 
entire hemisphere. If this notion be more freely uttered in 
commercial, philological, or religious circles than in political 
ones, it nevertheless underlies most popular discussion of in- 
ternational affairs. In another domain Buddhism, Judaism, 
Mohammedanism, and Christianity have been simplifying and 
unifying forces of a remarkable kind. Then the revolutions 
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expressed an im- 
pulse of much the same nature, in the new form of democracy. 
And the statement of the Darwinian theory, with its corollary 
of the survival of the fittest, had a profound effect in awaken- 
ing a more general consciousness of the process, in investing 
it with a new sanction, and in stimulating men's imaginations 
with regard to the destiny of races. What more natural, then, 
than that we should conceive of the process as continuing to 
its logical conclusion ? 

It would, of course, be claiming too much to assert that 
any such program has been definitely proposed. When it 
comes to logical conclusions, we are of a saving vagueness. 
Men are too divided as to which religion, which language, 
which race, will enjoy the ultimate supremacy ; too unwilling 
to consider a possible transformation of their own. Yet cer- 
tain pacifists^ on the one hand, and certain imperialists, on 
the other, have evolved the thesis that the world, through the 



34 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

triumph of some one idea, some one power, some one civiliza- 
tion, is destined to resolve itself at last into a relative if not 
an absolute political unity. Indeed not the most obscure of 
the belligerents in the present war, both before the outbreak 
of hostilities and during their course, has uttered very pointed 
declarations with regard to the importance of its own voice in 
the councils of mankind, and with regard to the destiny of its 
own Kultur. And the course of the war has made this order 
of speculation more and more pointed. We ask ourselves if 
events are working for this larger unity, and if so, in favor of 
which power they are working ; or whether, on the contrary, 
the ruling powers of the world are to increase in num- 
ber rather than to decrease ; and which alternative may be 
more desirable. 

In short, the whole question of the war may be said to re- 
solve itself into a conflict between two views of government, 
two ideals of national destiny. There is of course a great 
danger in reducing so complicated a mass of phenomena to 
so simple a formula. It is too simple. At the same time, the 
only hope of clarifying a dark situation, at least for oneself, 
is to make of it what analysis one may. And through the 
smoke, the terror, the passions, the inconsistencies of this 
greatest of wars, the fact seems to emerge that the Tur co- 
Teutonic powers, more characteristically than their enemies, 
stand for a theory of empire that certainly has time and 
precedent on its side. To hold the state exempt from the code 
of the individual, to consider the honor and might of the state 
as the only admissible might or honor, to enlarge the borders 
of the state at the expense of weaker states, to bring into the 
state and keep there, by force if need be, such alien elements 
as the interests of the state might demand, to regard the state 
as destined to lead or to survive all other states, was the prin- 
ciple of all ancient empires, as of Napoleon's epic experiment, 
and seems to be the principle animating the three empires 
in question. Austria-Hungary, the beginner of the war, is 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 35 

notoriously an empire of patchwork, made up of elements the 
most diverse, speaking different languages, following different 
religions, held together partly by force, partly by political 
expediency. The Turks, who originated in a quarter of Asia 
far to the east of their present habitat, rule an empire more 
intricately diverse, because less divisible into distinct prov- 
inces — an empire into which they broke their way by force, 
and in a remnant of which they maintain themselves only by 
force. Germany, the strongest of the trio, is strongest for 
one reason because she is the most homogeneous ; and no one 
disputes her secular right to the greater part of the territory 
she occupies. Yet during the last generation or two we have 
seen her extend those territories at the expense of peaceable 
neighbors, paying no heed to consequent outcries. We have 
heard her emit medieval theories with regard to mailed fists, 
scraps of paper, places in the sun. And we hear her asking 
to-day, in all seriousness, if the peace and happiness of man- 
kind do not require that she should annex Belgium, further 
portions of France, and I know not how many other alien 
territories. 

The reader, for his part, may very well ask whether this 
older imperialism be peculiar to the Turco-Teu tonic powers. 
I make haste to assure him that I do not, because I truthfully 
cannot, put forth any such argument. Not even with regard 
to little Serbia, Jons et origo of the war, does the argument 
hold ; for at the outset of the war her frontiers included cer- 
tain districts which were hers only by right of conquest. As 
for Russia, who took up the sword in Serbia's behalf, Bess- 
arabia, the Crimea, Finland, and Poland are portions of the 
European continent which passed unwillingly under her sway. 
Russia's French ally possesses in Africa and Asia a great em- 
pire to which she has no right of blood. Italy has also planted 
her foot in Africa, and has shown symptoms of desiring to 
repeat the experiment in Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula. 
Japan has within a few years advanced beyond her own borders 
and proclaimed her preponderant interest in the affairs of a 



36 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

neighboring empire; while Great Britain has grown in three 
hundred years from a rainy island of the Atlantic to an empire 
the vastest and most heterogeneous the world has ever seen. 
She it was, in fact, who widened the field of European compe- 
tition from one continent to six, whose policies of sea power 
and colonization have had upon other countries an ascendancy 
out of all proportion to their needs, and who has the most to 
gain or to lose by the outcome of the war. 

To these necessary admissions I will further add that neither 
in one group nor in the other are motives and responsibilities 
evenly distributed. We cannot say of one that it obviously 
and unanimously stands for this, or of the other that it alone 
represents that. But the fact that one is the attacking and the 
other the defending group indicates at once a line of cleavage. 
And if we follow the general example of our time, and counte- 
nance one standard of international relations for Europe, and 
one for those parts of the world which are outside the domi- 
nant civilization of our time, the line of cleavage becomes still 
more distinct. Germany, during the past year, has more than 
once demanded with astonishment and indignation why she 
receives so little outside sympathy. The answer is perfectly 
simple. No other country of our day in Europe has so loudly 
expressed its contempt of its neighbors, or has shown so little 
scruple with regard to their rights. Among the inhabitants of 
that continent the attacking powers are the ones that have to 
be most closely watched and most continuously guarded 
against by those about them. And if they should fail to win 
their war, the smaller races of Europe would come into far 
more of their own than if the defending powers came to grief. 

I do not choose, however, to invoke a double standard of 
civilization. And it is in the very matter of empires beyond 
the seas that the line of cleavage between the attacking and 
the defending powers becomes most distinct. The course of 
the war has brought forward the British Empire as the prin- 
cipal object of attack. Its adversaries fail to say, however, that 
that empire is not one of conquest or cold-blooded calculation. 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 37 

It is almost fantastically an empire of chance. The coloni- 
zation of America, of Australia, of South Africa, however 
debatable from our present point of view, was perfectly 
in accordance with the public opinion of its time. It was the 
work of born sailors and pioneers, in whose sea- wanderings 
are bound up much that is most noble and chivalric of our 
race. As for India and Egypt, their occupation was in the 
beginning no less accidental. The foundations of the Indian 
Empire were unwittingly laid by a company of traders. And 
Great Britain would not have gone into Egypt if other Euro- 
pean powers and the constituted suzerain of the country had 
not refused to intervene in a dangerous situation. What there 
is of calculation in the British Empire discovers itself in the 
gradual acquisition of strategic outposts and naval bases, pro- 
tecting trade routes and vested interests which long went 
unquestioned. I perfectly agree with the attacking powers in 
being unable to regard such vested interests as superior, in the 
long run, to those of the alien subjects of Great Britain. Nor 
can I regard, Great Britain herself can hardly regard, her 
occupation of Egypt and India as permanent. But no one 
can deny — and least of all the former suzerain of Egypt — 
that Egypt and India, accustomed for centuries to the oppres- 
sions of conquerors, have vastly benefited by the British occu- 
pation, and that the day of their freedom has been hastened 
rather than retarded by that occupation. Furthermore it is 
the merest truism to repeat that Great Britain has always 
been the champion of local self-government. She has by no 
means an unbroken record in this regard, but her imperialism 
is notoriously of the democratic type. If the Anglo-Saxon 
race stands for anything, after all, it stands in the world for 
the liberty of the individual, and his right to make his way 
up if he be worthy of it. And then I have said nothing of 
France, whose classic experiment in democracy has had so 
profound an influence upon the modern world. 

Of the attacking powers, on the other hand, it is no less a 
truism to say that they stand in the world as the upholders 



38 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

of aristocracy, of centralization, of the will of the few as com- 
pared to the will of the many, of the empire of calculation 
and conquest. I do not say that their opponents, and certain 
of them more than others, are free from those tendencies, or 
that those tendencies are necessarily evil. Neither do I say 
that the attacking powers are without justification for their 
pretensions — though I must say that it is hardly for the 
masters of Shantung or Armenia to cast the first stone at the 
masters of Egypt. It is difficult to plead for the Turks that 
they have ever benefited the peoples who fell under their 
sway — save to quicken a dormant sense of nationality. But 
one must admit that an element of accident entered into their 
conquest of the Byzantine Empire, and that that conquest was 
also in accordance with the public opinion of its time. The 
Turks, therefore, like many another migrating race, have if 
only by the mere force of time acquired certain definite 
squatters' rights. And we can hardly criticize the instinct 
that urges them to become masters in their own house, how- 
ever we may deprecate their methods in attaining that end. 
Of Austria-Hungary, again, one can say that that empire is 
founded even more solidly in the old imperialism, and that 
in modern times its diversity has partly been a willing one 
on the part of its non-Teuton and non-Magyar elements. Of 
Germany, furthermore, it is patent that she has had great 
temptation. It must be humiliating to so intelligently or- 
ganized a people to consider that they were split into an 
infinity of petty princedoms long after the English and the 
French had settled those questions of internal policy. It must 
be bitter to a William II or to an Admiral von Tirpitz to re- 
flect that as long ago as 1598 an obscure London schoolman 
was able to begin publishing "The Principall Navigations, 
Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation," 
and that the traders of Bremen, Hamburg, and Liibeck allowed 
those of Havre and Southampton quietly to reach their hands 
across the seas — with the result that the largest, the strong- 
est, and certainly not the least enlightened people of Europe 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 39 

proper now finds itself at a disadvantage as regards access to 
the sea and colonies for its surplus population. 

What is most curious in this situation, however, and most 
disquieting, is that in this day and generation Germany should 
carefully study the map, mark out in which directions it would 
be advantageous to herself to expand, and seriously say to her- 
self : "I am the strongest nation in Europe, the most active, 
the most intelligent, and I have the least room in which to 
stretch myself. Why should I not have the position which is 
my due? Why should I hesitate to do now what in earlier 
times no other nation ever hesitated to do? Why should I 
not act on my belief that no good is higher than the good of 
the state? Why should I not create intelligently such an 
empire as one or two of my neighbors have blindly acquired 
at random? And why should I not be acknowledged the 
master of the world ? Why shall I allow myself to be thwarted 
by a stupid and grasping race like the English, by a degenerate 
race like the French, by insignificant races like the Belgian, 
the Danish, the Dutch, the Serbian, perhaps even the Turkish, 
when by a little effort and a little temporary unpleasantness 
I can gain the place which my qualities deserve, and in the 
end really increase the happiness and well-being of the world 
at large?" 

This question has the advantage of being both frank and 
logical. And, as I have said, one cannot wonder, from a de- 
tached point of view, that Germany should put it to herself. 
But, from the same detached point of view, one cannot watch 
without astonishment and uneasiness Germany's attempt to 
answer that question. One cannot, in the first place, help 
feeling a profound distrust of the merely verbal logic, the logic 
not of the spirit but of the letter, which has brought Germany 
to such conclusions as Louvain and Rheims and Ypres, as the 
sinking of the Lusitania and the shooting of Miss Cavell. Then 
the validity of the German premises is not beyond dispute. 
Opinions differ, for one thing, as to the truth of Germany's 



40 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

apparent persuasion that she is best qualified to become 
the leader of the world and marked out by the Most High for 
that destiny. Opinions even differ, if I may put forward a 
suggestion of so little general credit, as to whether the good 
of the state be really the supreme good. Or, to put it in 
another way, some men are not convinced that the immediate 
worldly welfare of the state is in the long run the real good 
of the state. As yet, it is true, there exists no such inter- 
national court of appeal as among individuals may protect 
a man from a powerful and unscrupulous neighbor. Yet, 
after all, there is a feeling abroad in the world that the 
code of the citizen, of which Germany has been so successful 
an upholder, the code according to which the thief, the bandit, 
and the murderer are not allowed to indulge their private 
inclinations with impunity, however gifted and competent 
they may be, is also a good code for the state. There is a 
feeling abroad in the world that the doctrine of democracy, 
which does not claim the superiority of the poor and the weak 
and the humble, but which claims the right of the poor and 
the weak and the humble to compete on equal terms with 
the rich and the strong and the proud, is a doctrine good 
for nations as for individuals. And there is a feeling abroad in 
the world that the theory of evolution, and its corollary of the 
survival of the fittest, are not quite so simple as the Germans 
seem to believe. The world is perfectly willing to grant that 
Germany is in certain ways the most fit. Her efficiency, both 
on the battlefield and in the fields of public administration and 
private enterprise, is beyond a doubt. Yet there are those who 
ask themselves whether efficiency, whether physical or me- 
chanical fitness, be the chief end of man. And there are those 
who feel that the stupid and grasping Englishman, that the 
degenerate Frenchman, that the insignificant Belgian, not to 
mention the half-conscious Russian, have shown, even in 
comparison with the competent German, qualities not only 
quite as admirable as a clockwork efficiency but quite as 
likely to reach the final proof of success. 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 41 

But there is another aspect of this questionable thesis of 
which Germany and her allies are the most open champions, 
that argues even more positively against their policy of 
"rectifying" frontiers. To the "logical" type of mind it may 
seem a simple enough matter to study the map and mark how 
by nudging back a neighbor here, fencing in a Naboth's vine- 
yard there, or cutting off some one else's light, one may ar- 
range oneself a comfortable place in the sun or haply make a 
push to the East. If the enterprising map-maker, however, 
has the courage to draw his paper frontier outside the real 
frontier of his race, he discovers that the matter is not quite 
so simple after all. In fact he only wills to his descendants 
problems and enmities that poison their enjoyment of their 
patrimony. For if history teaches us anything at all, it teaches 
us that nothing is more difficult than to "rectify" a racial 
frontier. In fact, after innumerable experiments in that 
direction, men have discovered only one satisfactory way of 
changing — at will — a racial frontier. That way is totally to 
get rid of all persons of the race impinged upon — either by 
the somewhat slow and expensive process of expelling them, 
or by the quicker, cheaper, and decidedly more effective method 
of massacring them. 

There is, to be sure, another possible expedient of which 
there has been much talk in the world ; namely, assimilation.. 
Of the success in modern times of this expedient the attacking 
powers offer us evidence sufficiently striking. The Turks have 
been so little able to digest the foreign elements of their empire 
that six separate kingdoms — or seven, if we count Albania 
— ■ have been formed out of their European possessions. And 
we have lately seen what steps they have taken to prevent a 
similar shrinkage of their territories in Asia. Austria-Hungary 
is racially an older empire, founded upon something more 
nearly approaching a system of federation. But the racial 
boundaries of that empire have scarcely shifted in a thousand 
years. And Germany — has it been the Prussification of 
Poland, of Schleswig-Holstein, of Alsace-Lorraine, that 



42 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

encourages her to deliberate whether she shall not extend the 
benefits of that process to Belgium, to northern France, to 
western Russia, to I know not what other portions of the 
earth? Primitive and discredited as are certain of her ideas 
for this day of the world, I am not willing to suppose that she 
sanctions, at least for herself, the methods of her Turkish 
ally. But what ground can so intelligent a nation have for 
hoping to assimilate alien populations against their will, or to 
have peace without doing so ? 

Our own history gives us reason, perhaps, to wonder whether 
the period of the formation of races be entirely past. Yet it is 
so far past that we have little light on the origin of the prin- 
cipal races of the world. And although names and boundaries 
have fluctuated constantly since men first began to record 
such things, we should have learned by this time that nothing 
in history is less permanent than conquest. The assimilation 
on any scale of one race by another may perhaps have been 
possible in prehistoric times, when means for recording the 
identity of a people either did not exist or were confined to 
the very few, when communications were difficult and danger- 
ous, when one country could live in complete ignorance of 
another, and when there was no such thing as an international 
public opinion. But we have no record of any such assimila- 
tion — by force. Such processes as the expansion of Rome 
under the Republic, as the unification of modern Italy and 
Germany, are one thing. Expansion among alien races is and 
always has been quite another. Did Rome really absorb the 
Briton, the Gaul, the Iberian, the Teuton? Has the Jew dis- 
appeared, two thousand years after the disappearance of his 
country? How lasting a mark did the great Latin, Greek, or 
Turkish empires, did the republics of Athens, Genoa, or Venice, 
leave upon the humble tribes of the Balkan Peninsula? No 
conqueror has ever been able to swallow an alien race. The 
nearest approach to that feat yet accomplished has sometimes 
been performed by an alien race in swallowing a conqueror — ■ 
as happened to the Goths in Italy, the Normans in England 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 43 

and Sicily. For the sole type of assimilation possible is by 
choice, not by force. And how slowly even an elective assimi- 
lation operates, we have lately had occasion to note on our 
own continent, where the United States receives all who come 
to her — on condition that they adopt her ways. 

Thus we begin to arrive at the heart of our question. Na- 
tions have come, it is true, to deal in vaster terms than ever 
before. Modern means of communication have given govern- 
ment a scope and a centralization impossible to the empires of 
old. And the ancient imperialism has found flattering sanction 
in a new philosophy. It is small wonder that men find it easy 
to think of a paramount power. But side by side with this 
work of simplification and unification has silently gone on 
another process. Or, rather, the process of simplification and 
unification has reached a point where we begin to suspect that 
it has limits. The mainspring of the process has always been 
the human impulse that magnifies for a man his own house, 
his own district, his own race. From century to century that 
impulse has grown in consciousness, has drawn into closer and 
closer relations men of one tongue, has, as the sentiment of 
nationality, thrown up stronger and stronger barriers against 
the old imperialism. And it compels us to ask at last whether 
that imperialism can permanently operate outside the bounds 
of its own race. The answer of evolution, of the survival of 
the fit, is the most debatable of answers, since none agree who 
are the fit and who the unfit. Moreover, evolution tells us 
of another process, no less inevitable than that of integration ; 
namely, the process of differentiation. As a matter of fact we 
have no reason whatever to suppose that nature cultivates a 
type. She cultivates types. It is only man that must have 
unities, hierarchies, hegemonies. There is room in the world 
for countries big and little, for languages and habits of many 
kinds, for that wide play of individuality which is shadowed 
in plant and animal life. A world containing such different 
civilizations as the Anglo-Saxon, the French, the German, the 



44 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

Italian, the Japanese, the Russian, is infinitely richer than any 
world containing only one of them. And as among individuals 
civilization has made possible the survival of the physically 
unfit, and the discovery in some of them of rarer fitnesses, so, 
against our will, as it were, and almost without our knowledge, 
does it come to be among peoples. Force and size and numbers, 
which have always claimed the right for their side, are of less 
and less avail against something else of which we are but 
vaguely aware. At the very moment when the dream of world 
empire has more resources at its command than ever before, 
the attainment of its end retires to a greater distance. Nor is 
there any real menace to the harmony and progress of the 
world in the view that the world is to belong to many coun- 
tries, not to one. And unjust as may seem the chain of acci- 
dent that has done more for one nation than for another, it is 
surely time for nations to be aware that no standard of com- 
parison is more unreliable or more dangerous. In the perspec- 
tive of history the greatness of nations is seen to be not unlike 
the greatness of states in our own senate, where Delaware and 
Rhode Island have as many voices as New York and Cali- 
fornia, and where the intelligence of the voice has been known 
to count for more than the voting power of the state behind 
it. It is even within the bounds of possibility that King Albert 
of Belgium, who rules a shot-riddled acre of swamp and sand- 
dune, will in generations to come be remembered quite as long 
and quite as honorably as his great and good friend Kaiser 
Wilhelm II. 

It is not without reason that, contrary to the unifying tend- 
ency of our time, we see the persistence of small countries like 
Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Switzerland. They are 
not without affinity for neighboring countries. They could be 
subdued in an hour by those countries. But, strangely enough, 
they yet preserve their individuality. More striking still, 
we see fragments of populations, like the Irish, the Scotch, 
and the Welsh in Great Britain, the Finns in Russia, the 
Bohemians and southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary, the 



THE PRINCIPLES AT WAR 45 

Armenians, the Greeks, the Kurds, the Laz, and the Syrians in 
Turkey, and the dismembered Poles, maintaining to a greater 
or lesser extent their own language and identity. It would, of 
course, be no occasion for surprise if these smaller elements of 
society should ultimately be lost in the larger combinations. 
But neither, on the other hand, can any one marvel if they 
continue to remain distinct, if some of them even regain a 
complete independence. 

The fundamental question of the war, then, is a conflict 
between the old imperialism of conquest and the principle of 
nationalities — the principle that a people, great or small, has 
the right to choose its own destiny. That question, between 
Austria-Hungary and Serbia, precipitated the war. And with- 
out, a just settlement of that question there can be, there 
should be, no hope of permanent peace. For as long as the 
society of nations countenances the code of the outlaw, as 
long as a single member of that society holds that might makes 
right or claims his freedom to attack and pillage a neighbor, 
so long will it be necessary for other members of the society 
to carry arms. Peace is more desirable than war, but liberty 
and honor are more desirable than peace. I hold no brief for 
political assassinations. Neither do I put forward any special 
pleading on behalf of Serbia or her allies. What I put forward 
is the case of the Serbs — as contrary to that natural, human, 
just, and irresistible tendency of our time which created 
modern Italy and the German Empire, which freed Hungary 
and the Balkan States from an Asiatic conqueror, which in 
Asia itself has set alight a new unrest. The people of Serbia 
and Montenegro, of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of Croatia, 
Dalmatia, and Istria, are racially one and the same. They 
speak the same language, they share the same legends, tradi- 
tions, and literature. It is the manifest destiny of that people, 
scattered from the Rhodope Mountains to the Danube, from 
the Danube to the Adriatic Sea, to reach, sooner or later, 
some form of political unity corresponding to their racial 
unity. And it is only righting the stars in their courses to 



46 THE ISSUES OF THE WORLD WAR 

attempt to thwart that destiny. The three empires who have 
set out to do so may for a moment succeed — • by exterminating 
the Serbians. The leading paper of Constantinople recently 
remarked, apropos of the junction of the German and Turkish 
forces : " And if, in the realization of this plan, the annihilation 
of Serbia is essential, what is the objection?" Such an im- 
perialism is none the less artificial, medieval, marked for 
ultimate disaster. There is of course, for the attacking powers, 
an element of tragedy in the situation. For Austria and Tur- 
key in particular, whose imperial robes contain least purple of 
their own, the way of justice is all but the way of doom. But 
the situation will never be solved except on the principle of 
nationalities. 



At all events, if the nations of the two Americas can com- 
bine to intervene in the affairs of a turbulent neighbor, how 
much more can the non-combatant nations of the world, 
who also have suffered by the war, who also share in the 
destiny of the world, assert their claim to insist that the 
treaty of peace be drawn up neither in satisfaction of in- 
dividual vengeances nor in support of an artificial balance of 
power, but in accordance with the principle of nationalities. 
Its acceptance, it is true, will necessarily entail problems the 
most harassing. But that most elementary principle of 
reason and justice is worth more to the world than peace or 
pride or wealth or happiness or the lives of its defenders. 
And if this war could establish it among men, Europe would 
not have thrown away her chosen youth in vain. 



II 

THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 



THE ROLE OF THE INFANTRY IN MODERN 
WARFARE 1 

General Malleterre 

[General J. M. G. Malleterre is an officer of the French Army who 
was wounded at the first Battle of the Marne and is now Governor of 
the Invalides, Paris. He has also served as military critic of the Paris 
Temps. The article of which the present selection is only one part was 
put into English by Herbert Adams Gibbons, and is an admirable ex- 
ample of the simple exposition of a technical subject.] 

In spite of the revolution that has been wrought by modern 
science, the chief role in everything that is done in this world 
is played by men working together. The forces that we have 
created by our brains are not a substitute for our own efforts, 
individually and collectively. They enable us only to do 
more than we would otherwise have done. They are not 
substitutes ; they are accessories. They would be substitutes 
in warfare only if one side alone employed them. Employed 
by both sides, they neutralize each other, and we fall back 
upon man power as the final and decisive element. 

Those who are not actually engaged in the new warfare 
think that it consists in long periods of stagnation, with 
an occasional local action here and there, and a rare offensive 
movement on a large scale. The daily bulletins issued by 
the armies lend color to this impression. It is, however, 
wholly wrong. Trench warfare is a continuous battle that 
will not end until the armistice is signed. On the front there 
is always firing, there is always fighting. The artillery has 
no rest night or day; the infantry, never ceasing its vigil, 
exposed all the time to shell fire and sniping, plies the shovel 

1 From " How Battles Are Fought To-Day," Harper's Magazine, October, 
191 7. Copyright, 191 7, by Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by permission. 

49 



50 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

and the pick, with arms at hand to repel or attack. This has 
taught us to make the unit battalions instead of divisions or 
regiments, and to exert every effort to avoid daily losses 
from needless and thoughtless exposure, and to get the day's 
work accomplished by division of labor that will keep the 
men in condition for the test that may come at any moment. 

It is by battalion that sectors are occupied, by battalion 
that offensive movements are carried on, by battalion that 
small operations are organized. The officer who commands 
a battalion does not have to think about tactical and strategic 
problems, but he is the chief reliance of the General Staff 
in the execution of an offensive movement. If we want to 
understand how an offensive is prepared and carried out — ■ 
in a word, how war is being fought in the autumn of 191 7, 
the role of the infantry must be treated from the standpoint 
of the battalion. A sector is that portion of the front lines 
occupied by a battalion. The battalions are the units. When 
a battalion moves up to relieve another battalion the problem 
of the organization of the sector confronts the commanding 
officer of the battalion. From the moment the order is given 
to move forward to occupy a sector until the battalion is 
brought back for rest, the responsibilities and duties of the 
commanding officer are as great and as onerous as those of 
his superiors. He is like the foreman in industrial life — con- 
stantly at it, responsible for what the men under him are 
doing, responsible to them as well as to the men higher up. 
He has to think of everything, carry a dozen different things 
at one time in his head, and be ready for any emergency. 
He must keep his men in good moral and physical condition 
by a just division of labor and by looking after their food 
and their safety. Psychologist, pathologist, carpenter, builder, 
engineer, cook, physician, scout, judge, father — get all 
these professions together, none of which are learned at St.- 
Cyr, and you have a good chef de bataillon. 

The organization of a sector consists of: (a) accessory 
defenses (elements de tranchee) which are made to arrest and 



THE INFANTRY IN MODERN WARFARE 51 

retard the enemy advancing under fire of the defense; (b) 
first line of surveillance, occupied by very few men, from 
which all ground in front can be well seen ; (c) line of resist- 
ance, occupied very strongly, which must be defended, in 
principle, whatever happens ; (d) lines of support, which con- 
tain here and there strongly organized centers that can be 
defended while lines in the rear are being organized. These 
successive lines are connected by communication trenches 
(boyaux). The boyaux serve primarily for protecting the 
soldiers going forward or coming from the front lines, the 
transmission of ammunition and food, the evacuation of 
wounded, and the passage of officers on their rounds. But 
at the moment of an attack, if the enemy has broken through 
one or more lines, the boyaux can be used also as defensive 
trenches, and are extremely useful in subjecting the enemy 
to a flanking fire. All the lines of trenches, as well as the 
centers of resistance on the line of support and the boyaux, 
are now protected by a prodigality of barbed-wire entangle- 
ments. The parallel trenches, as far as is possible, are dug 
in zigzag form, following the old principle of fortification, 
not only in order to subject the attackers to cross fire, but 
also to enable the defenders to hold a portion of the trench 
more readily, if the enemy breaks through at any point. 
Just before a general offensive movement steps are dug in 
the wall of the trench nearest the enemy, to facilitate the 
climbing out of the attacking forces, and the boyaux are 
widened so that reinforcements and munitions can pass 
rapidly. 

The accessory defenses depend entirely upon the nature 
of the ground that lies in front of the first line of surveillance, 
and this consideration dictates also how strongly it is advis- 
able to occupy elements de tranchee. The first line of surveil- 
lance cannot always be a continuous line. Sometimes it 
means only a little post here and there. Watchers (guetteurs) 
must be on the qui vive in the first line night and day. With 
adequate artillery preparation, it is always possible for the 



52 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

enemy to occupy the elements de tranchee and the premiere 
ligne. When one reads in the bulletins of the capture of these 
two advanced lines, the same or a following bulletin generally 
states that a counter attack has driven out the invaders. An 
offensive movement can be considered as serious only when 
the line of resistance, where the defenders are well dug in, 
has been carried. This line, too, can be smothered by heavy 
artillery. As we fight to-day, a big offensive is launched only 
after the line of resistance is supposed to be wholly destroyed, 
and the line of support subjected to a demoralizing shelling, 
which continues during the offensive. The line of support, 
occupied by entire companies, to whom reinforcements can 
be sent without delay, is where the attacking forces, if the 
artillery preparation has been sufficient, begin to suffer their 
first serious losses. The centers of resistance, villages and 
concrete forts, where existing buildings cannot be utilized, 
pour a deadly machine-gun fire upon the attackers. 

Under these conditions one might think that the infantry, 
constantly exposed to annihilation, has to play a passive 
role — at least in the first three lines. What can be done 
against a crushing artillery fire? Nothing can be done in 
the sector or sectors upon which the enemy concentrates 
his fire. But we must remember that there never will be 
enough cannon and enough ammunition to batter down the 
first and second positions, and keep shelling during the 
attack the lines of support, for more than a few kilometers 
at a time. Even within the few kilometers chosen for a con- 
centration of fire, we have learned that millions of shells do 
not create everywhere equally great ravages and equally 
favorable openings for the attackers. Consequently, while 
some sectors are doomed to destruction, others remain to 
take the enemy on the flank as he pours through the holes 
his artillery has made. This is true of offensives on a large 
scale as well as of local operations. Hence it is of a prime 
importance for each sector to keep in contact with the neigh- 
boring sectors, to be ready at any moment to go to the aid 



THE INFANTRY IN MODERN WARFARE 53 

of a threatened sector, or to help surround enemy forces 
that have advanced too far. The battalion commanders 
are in touch with their neighbors on both sides and with 
the higher command in the rear. If this contact be never 
lost, it is always possible for the commanders of groups of 
units, on up to General Headquarters, to know what is hap- 
pening, and to direct operations in the ensemble. 

At this point one may ask why I have started in to describe 
an offensive movement by talking about defensive organiza- 
tion. This is easily understood if one realizes that offensive 
warfare means now — unfortunately ! — no more than the 
moving of a few sectors forward a few kilometers. The suc- 
cess of this limited biting into the enemy lines depends upon 
the rapid organization of the ground taken. The battalion 
commanders can tolerate no moment of repose, no matter 
how exhausted their soldiers may be. Hesitation, bungling, 
slowness, are fatal. For very soon new enemy batteries will 
enter into action, and violent counter-attacks to gain the 
lost ground must be expected. So every offensive implies a 
defensive. If the officers and men who attack are not able to 
organize without delay the ground they have won, not only 
will they be subjected to a heavy bombardment before they 
have dug themselves in, but they will be forced to defend 
themselves in positions inferior to ones they have left. With 
artillery conditions such as they are, the infantry is able to 
conquer ground with slight losses; but, by the same token, 
holding the ground won necessitates sacrifices. 

For taking the offensive, then, the first training for officers 
and men is in organizing defensively a sector, and in learning 
how to keep in touch with the sectors on both sides and with 
the higher command in the rear. The use of pick and shovel 
is as important as that of rifle and bayonet and grenade. 
Learning how to avoid needless exposure, how to go back 
and forth in the boyaux at night, and how to bring up supplies, 
must be followed by instruction in the study of the enemy 
ground in front. Space forbids me even to mention the 



54 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

numerous signs of enemy activity that a good watcher can 
detect. Surprises are now practically impossible, and some 
of the best help given to the artillery in warding off enemy 
attacks and in preparing the ground for offensives has come 
from information of simple soldiers, telephoned back by 
chefs de bataillon who kept "on the job" with their men 
twenty-four hours in the day. 

Then follows the preparation of the soldiers, morally and 
technically, for an offensive movement. At the beginning 
of the war, raw soldiers who had never faced shell fire were 
thrown into action without the slightest preparation. We 
had to do it, although it was unfair to the men, for there was 
no other way to save France. Since the war has become a 
guerre de tranchee, it is possible to consider the psychology 
of the soldier. No matter how courageous and resourceful 
a man may be, he needs a progressive training to face death 
and to know how to think and act under fire. In the excite- 
ment of the actual forward movement, when men are fighting 
side by side, all may go well enough. But individual effort 
is required of the soldier after mass effort has won the ground. 
There comes the moment when men are separated in little 
groups, or find themselves alone. That is the critical moment 
in which the fruit of victory has to be reaped. Soldiers must 
be trained in such a way that they will be able to take full 
advantage of that moment. 

This training is gained by the progressive use of the soldiers 
of the battalion in minor operations immediately in front of 
their sector. Under the pretext of carrying messages, they 
are sent in couples from one point to another in front lines. 
They learn how to use the boyaux, how to pass from shelter 
to shelter in exposed places, how to find their way in the 
dark, and become familiar with the system of organization 
of advanced defenses. Then, if there is a "no man's land" 
between their sector and the enemy trenches, they can be 
sent out into the open to build elements de tranchee and lis- 
tening-posts, to put up and repair barbed wire, and — singly 



THE INFANTRY IN MODERN WARFARE 55 

now — to act as sentinels to protect others who are working 
thus in front of the sector. Next they go out in small groups 
for patrol and reconnoitering duty. This familiarizes them 
with the kind of country through which they must pass 
when the offensive is ordered, and they become expert in 
seizing upon everything that affords shelter and protection. 
The final step in training for the offensive is participation in 
raids {coups de main) . Raids are not made upon the initiative 
of the chef de bataillon. They are ordered from headquarters, 
but the carrying out of the operation is left to the commanders 
of the sectors. Raids always have in view the general objects 
of making the enemy nervous, putting him off the scent, and 
causing him uselessly to expend his ammunition. Often there 
is a particular object of spoiling some plan the enemy is sus- 
pected of being about to carry out, reconnoitering to see if 
he has a plan on foot, or capturing and destroying a minen- 
werfer, a machine-gun position, an annoying element de tranchee, 
or an advantageous observation post. Raids are welcomed 
by the chef de bataillon. They keep up the fighting spirit 
of his men, and, above all, they give him the opportunity 
to choose for the work men who need the final training for 
the offensive — acquaintance with hand-to-hand fighting 
with bayonet or knife or revolver, handling and facing gre- 
nades, machine-guns, liquid fires, and gases, passing into and 
across barbed wire, enemy trenches, and other obstacles, 
looking out and warding off sudden flanking fire attacks, and 
undergoing artillery bombardment in the open. 

Preparation for the offensive never ends. It is not our 
American friends alone, coming fresh to the battle fields of 
Europe, who have to go through this training. New men are 
being constantly brought to the front in the French and British 
armies. From the depots in the rear recruits are being received, 
and conditions change so rapidly in a few months that men 
who have been evacuated sick or wounded, when they return 
to their old regiments, have to go through a new period of 
training. They have forgotten much, and there are new 



56 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

tricks to learn. They need also to get hardened once more 
to pick and shovel, and to pass again progressively through 
the ordeal of being shelled. 

The four stages of the offensive are : (i) when the artillery 
bombardment is deemed sufficient, the troops for the assault 
are brought up into the sectors opposite their objective; (2) 
the artillery concentrates its fire upon the first enemy line — ■ 
at a moment that has been fixed the infantry advances from 
its trenches in successive lines and marches forward; (3) 
at that same moment the artillery fire moves forward equally 
— it is an advancing wall of steel, followed immediately by 
the infantry who enter into the enemy lines right behind shells ; 
(4) when the objectives have been attained, or when farther 
advance becomes impossible, the organization against the 
enemy's counter-fire and counter-attack begins immediately. 
For the first and fourth stages the experience gained in the 
sectors ought to enable the battalions to do what is required 
of them without a hitch. 

The second and third stages, which constitute the execution 
of the attack, will pass off smoothly if three conditions have 
been fulfilled : the men must be told what they are expected 
to accomplish and become familiar with the ground over 
which they will pass ; the artillery must be able to live up to 
its program, both as regards the preHminary bombardment 
of objectives and the progressive advancement of the curtain 
of fire on schedule time after the attack has started ; and the 
infantry must keep right along behind the artillery fire. 

Before the attack the ground between the sector and the 
objective is carefully studied by means of maps and by per- 
sonal observation, not only by the officers, but also by the 
men of the battalions. The artillery fire, directed by aero- 
planes, may have been concentrated upon the front to be 
stormed for several days. The aeroplanes and the advance 
posts note, as closely as they possibly can, the effect of the 
artillery fire. The changes wrought by the bombardment are 
wirelessed and telephoned back to Divisional Headquarters, 



THE INFANTRY IN MODERN WARFARE 57 

where cartographers change every few hours the maps of 
the enemy lines according to the indications thus given them. 
At the moment of the attack the troops of assault have seen 
maps and photographs only a few hours old. Added to this 
information from headquarters, they have their own knowl- 
edge, from long study and constant observation, of just what 
obstacles are to be met on their particular route toward the 
objective. So thoroughly do the men know the ground to be 
traversed, each trench and center of resistance, each machine- 
gun emplacement, that they can go ahead in the dark with 
confidence. They have been informed also, as far as is humanly 
possible, just where the artillery may not have destroyed 
barbed wire and where machine-gun centers are supposed 
to remain intact. The officers of the sector have in their 
hands a time-table, which is rigidly adhered to, stating ex- 
actly when the artillery will advance its fire. So they know 
how fast to go to follow directly upon the heels of the shells. 
This is of prime importance, for if the march is not regulated 
in such a way as to follow from seventy-five to a hundred 
yards behind the artillery fire, the enemy will have time to 
come out of his dugouts, rig up mitrailleuses, and defend his 
line of support and centers of resistance. Trenches must be 
entered and centers of resistance surrounded immediately 
after the artillery fire has passed on — or there is no hope of 
success. 

The formation for the assault is a series of waves (vagues) 
which leave the trenches successively from fifty to one hun- 
dred and fifty yards apart. Where there is reason to believe 
that the artillery cannot have completely demolished the first 
two enemy lines of trenches, it is frequently deemed advisable 
to send expert riflemen, either separately a few feet apart, 
or in groups, as the first line of assault. These have a better 
chance, at less risk, than solid lines, to silence what resistance 
may be encountered in the first trenches. But as the artillery 
can now be counted upon to do its work thoroughly, the 
waves of assault are generally formed from the start of men 



58 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

who march elbow to elbow. In each line there is a mixture 
of specialists — lassoers, bomb-throwers, machine-gun and 
trench-cannon crews. 

We have spoken of the artillery preparation, under the 
present conditions, as assuring the possibility of the advance 
of the infantry without great loss, and a very recent offensive, 
which won the Wyschaete-Messines salient, has demonstrated 
the possibility of complete success in this. However, it must 
be always borne in mind that everything cannot be expected 
to go well everywhere, and that not only machine-gun nests, 
but also concealed batteries may in places escape destruction 
and enter into action before the objective of the assault is 
reached. There is always danger, unless it is a salient that 
is being stormed, of flanking fire and attacks. We have not 
yet come to the point of overwhelming superiority in artillery 
and aeroplanes where we can assure our troops of assault 
protection until the moment of counter-fire and counter- 
attack. Hence the necessity still remains, during the second 
and third stages of the offensive, of keeping the lines moving, 
no matter what unexpected resistance may develop, and of 
assuring adequate reinforcements. 



THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME * 

" Odysseus" 

["Odysseus" is the pseudonym of a writer in Blackwood's Magazine 
who has, in a series of pen pictures called "The Scene of War," which ap- 
peared during 1916 and 191 7, given perhaps the most artistic descriptions 
of the various battle fields and points of interest from the North Sea to 
Suez. From the present selection a few paragraphs relating to aviation 
have been omitted.] 

I had seen the mighty effort of our people on the Somme, 
and had witnessed the battle for Morval and Lesbceufs from 
a point very near the left wing of our gallant allies ; but I had 
not yet seen the French in action. I was therefore glad to 
know that an opportunity was now to be given me of doing so. 

Our headquarters were in an old Cathedral town, in whose 
streets and squares there were almost as many Englishmen as 
Frenchmen ; while at our hotel the khaki and the gray blue 
were closely intermingled. It was the meeting point here, a 
little in the rear, of the two armies. 

The early morning found us on one of those straight, logical 
roads — unlike our own — that run with their French direct- 
ness and singleness of purpose from one considered point to 
another. It was a road animated by all the stir and prep- 
aration of organized war; which, as it is developed by the 
patient and strenuous industry of her people throughout 
France, comes slowly, like the shaft of a lance to its blade- 
point, to its final conclusion here upon the Front. So over- 
whelming is the interest of the Fighting Line — that strange, 
shifting, and tragic area, where the thoughts and ideals of men 
are brought to the anvil of war — that one is prone to neglect 

^rom Blackwood's Magazine, February, 1917. Reprinted by permission. 

59 



60 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

these mighty preparations, this patient and faithful toil that 
is the prelude to victory. 

As we swept along the straight white road, it was thronged 
with these symbols of the will and tenacity of France. 

"Under the light, sparkling surface of this people," said 
my companion, " there resides a core of indestructible granite, 
and the Boche is up against it now." 

So he is; and the granite is legible upon the faces of all 
those men who toil upon these long white roads that are the 
arteries of war. 

Gone for the moment are the vivacity and the joy; but 
the infinite patience, the undying valor, these remain ; and 
let us bow to them when we meet them on the road. 

Here are the menders restoring to the road its traditional 
perfection; reclaiming it foot by foot from the indignity 
that has been put upon it. Here are the drivers of the wagons, 
carrying to their brethren the provender of battle ; the food 
and the fuel they need for their sustenance, the shells and 
cartridges they claim for the intruder upon their ancient 
soil. White with the dust, seamed with the sweat and the 
stress of their traffic, hard and enduring, these men have 
but one purpose at heart, one end in view ; and to this their 
strength is uncomplainingly directed. 

Beside them, along the Light Railway that cleaves the 
fields, there move the great guns, the armored cars, and 
gallant engines, the steel wagons full of shells. 

The Light Railways converge at the temporary terminus a 
little behind the battle line, and a great activity is concen- 
trated here at the base of supply. 

It is a busy scene, interrupted from time to time by the 
thrust of war. The German aeroplane, when it can get so 
far, drops its bombs, under cover of the night, upon the little 
colony, killing friend and foe alike; and Fritz and Francois 
lie beside each other stricken by the same missile. The sound 
of the battle is heard in the distance, and the shadows of 
evening are lit with the summer lightning of the guns. 



THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME 61 

Farther upon the road are the great guns that travel by 
rail, and heave their shells a distance of twenty kilometers. 
You can see them in the autumn mists like mammoths point- 
ing their trunks towards the invader, and from time to time 
you can see the flame as it issues from their lips; you can 
hear the thunder of their voices as the gros obus go hurtling 
through the sky. If you go up to them, you will find them 
like Leviathan at home in a field, and behind each gun the 
wagon of steel in which his provender is laid. 

When the door of the wagon is opened, one of the sleeping 
creatures is nipped by the claws of a traveling crane and de- 
posited like a puppy in a cradle that moves along an aerial 
line of rail, until it is arrived at the mighty breach, its last 
resting place before it fulfills its destiny. 

The slow twisting of a screw behind it sends it forth with a 
persuasive impulse into the open breach; the door is closed 
upon its mystery; and then with a mighty music it sweeps 
upon the world, a living thing. 

Beside this portent the quiet cattle pasture, indifferent even 
to its voice ; the women toil with bent shoulders in the fields 
they love, and the life of the hamlet moves upon its ancient 
course. 

When evening comes, the people of the gun gather together 
like factory workers after the day's toil, and you can see 
them in a dark silhouette against the reddening sky, as a 
truck carries them away to their billets. One of the last to 
leave is the Battery Commander, a man who is the human 
equivalent of his charge ; solid and direct ; a hard and deter- 
mined hitter. 

Beyond the great guns and the Aviation Camp, the road 
now carries us into the dread Land of War. You cannot 
mistake it if you have once seen it here in France; for it 
is the negation of all that you have held most dear upon this 
earth. In this land Ruin walks hand in hand with Death. 
The green meadows and the russet orchards, the lovely woods 
that should be turning to gold and amber and cinnabar; 



62 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

the creepers that should be climbing in crimson upon the 
cottage walls; the old people at their doors, the children at 
the gate, the rose-cheeked maidens blushing with the sap 
and flow of life ; the blue smoke of each homestead curling 
into the quiet sky; the lights at the windows; the stir and 
music of the street, — all these have gone. 

Aceldama, it has become a place of woe; and Golgotha, 
a place of skulls. 

One cannot convey to another, who has not seen it, the 
desolation and horror of the scene. The fields are of a melan- 
choly brown, where dying weeds hang their dejected and 
tattered heads ; the woods are ghostly remnants of what once 
were trees, but are now misshapen and tortured forms that 
grieve the open sky ; the houses where they retain any form 
at all are ruined beyond the semblance of human habitations, 
with roofs that grin at one like the teeth of a skull, and walls 
that look as if a leprosy had fastened upon their tottering 
remains. The white highway, that was once so superb and 
finished a thing, the lineal heir of Rome, is now as weary and 
as broken as if it led to Hell. 

A side-road from it — one of those familiar and domestic 
things we love — leads to the hamlet and Chateau of — — , 
and it is the most pitiful semblance of a road upon which 
human footsteps ever echoed since man began to call himself 
civilized. 



As we emerged into the daylight, a French plane came 
flying low over the ruins of the Chateau, ringed about with 
black puffs of shrapnel, which pursued her like hounds. 

All about us lay the remnants of the Chateau. That 
rubbish-heap there was its farm, and that blistered spot 
upon which no blade of grass was visible was its lawn. Those 
withered trees were its sheltering wood, and here and there 
we could trace the fragments of its encircling wall. The 
whole of its area was seamed with the German trenches. 



THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME 63 

An officer who was with me looked at it with a cool and de- 
liberate air. 

" Quite done for," he said, "and I happen to know that 

De K spent three hundred thousand francs on it just 

before the war broke out." 

It is thus that you realize what France has endured. 

We were now obliged to enter the shelter of the long com- 
munication trench; and from time to time as we stopped to 
look over its walls we could see the Artillery battle progressing 
with an increasing fury, the flight of the German aeroplanes, 
and the falling ever nearer and nearer of the shells. Here 
and there in the general waste there survived the fragment 
of a wall, a solitary tree which helped to mark the direction 
we were taking. All else was a void, blistered beyond all 
earthly semblance. 

The black face of a nigger peeping out from this Inferno 
was a startling apparition. 

We found him presently, one of a party, clearing the ruined 
trenches. Pipe in mouth, clad in the same blue helmet and 
uniform, they worked here side by side with their French 
brethren. Brethren they were, too, in their easy and friendly 
companionship. In the hospitals, too, you find them so — 
black face and white face near each other, bound by the tie 
of common sacrifice. 

Every here and there a small wooden cross, standing up 
from the walls of the trench with some simple inscription, u Un 
brave Francais," showed where lay the remnants of one who 
had died for his country. 

And then we came to a point which the diggers had not 
yet reached; whence the tide of battle had barely ebbed, 
and the trenches still lay as they had been left by the beaten 
enemy. 

"Here, where we stand now," said one who was with us, 
"you see the debris of a barrage across which the Boche 
and our people threw hand grenades at each other, until 
we broke through and drove them before us." 



64 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

Every few yards there was a shaft leading down from the 
trench into a dugout, and in each of these dugouts there 
lay rifles and bandoliers and gas masks, hastily abandoned 
by the enemy ; and sometimes these dugouts were sealed by 
the explosion of a shell, and in them there lay those who had 
been killed or buried alive. 

And so we came to where the dead still lay unburied; 
the human creature with all his potentialities reduced to 
that which had better remain undescribed. . . . 

We still went on, and as I turned to look back I found that 

I was alone with C ■, an officer of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, 

who strode on before me gay and exultant. 

"We are about 300 meters now from the Boche; let us see 
what's happening," said he, and climbing a little way up the 
broken wall of the trench, he looked out upon the howling waste. 

It was the same tragic scene that had met our eyes since 
first we embarked upon this journey — but more deadly, 
more intense in its mournful expression. The increasing 
battle, the loud explosions of the shells, the rattle of the 
machine-guns, the German planes venturing here and there 
within our reach, the rising columns and masses of black 
smoke, the dead men lying below, gave me an impression 
that can never fade of the hell into which the best and bravest 
of the world go with a smile. 

And then a little incident occurred which brought the 
scene to a sort of personal climax. For as I stood here, ab- 
sorbed in its detail, I saw approaching me, racing across the 
gray waste, like some footballer dashing for his goal, a small 
black creature, clearly visible, swaying from side to side, yet 
furiously intent upon its course. I dropped into the trench 
to the sound of a smashing explosion ; a shower of mud, and 

a heavy fall as de V , who had been following us, rolled 

over at my feet. 

"Nous Vavons echappe belle" laughed C , brushing the 

mud from his tunic, and as I did the same a small warm object 
fell from the folds of my coat. 



THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME 65 

"It was the wind of the damned thing that knocked me 
over," said de V , picking himself up, somewhat abashed. 

We found the shell on the lip of the trench fuming as if 
with rage at having failed of its purpose. 

We were evidently in luck ; for Mr. Bass, of an American 
paper — an old campaigner who carries with him a wound 
from the Russian front — who should have been where it 
fell, had fortunately dropped a couple of yards behind. The 
rest of our party, farther off, seeing the shell fall, retired to 
a dugout, assured that we should never meet again. A pause 
of a second or two — a yard this way or that, — such is the 
interval between all that lif e means to us and the bleak oblivion 
of death. 

It is a risk that the soldier at the Front takes every day 
of his life. 

"Don't be distressed for me if I fall," says he, writing to 
mother or wife, "it is a glorious death to die." 

We ate our lunch in an underground mansion, which for 
the past two years had been the home of a German General 
and his Staff. And when we had finished, we climbed out 
into the open again to find Francois Flameng, with his 
fresh face and cheery air, his blue trench helmet on his 
head, and a pipe in the corner of his mouth, painting 
the villa. The French officers of our party were delighted 
to see him. There was much hand-shaking and friendly 
chaff, and we had the honor of being introduced to the 
painter. 

It seems that M. Flameng has permission to go where he 
likes and to paint whatever pleases his eye. Since the be- 
ginning of the War he has been busy in this way, and there is 
no one better known in trench and camp than this distin- 
guished and joyous personage. It was a great and a very un- 
expected pleasure to see him at work. 

The scene amidst which these events transpired was of an 
impressive character. Above it there rose in its tragic and 



66 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

misshapen lines the gaunt skeleton of a wood. At one end 
of it there was a cemetery of new-made graves, each with 
its wooden cross and simple inscription: "Guyot Pierre — 

Soldier of France" — " Lieutenant M , an affectionate 

tribute from his Company." Beside them stood a tall man in 
a long buff coat with his cassock peeping from under it, a 
trench helmet on his head, and a face like that of Christ, 
with his blond beard and gentle eyes. Next to him stood 
the Divisional Surgeon, a humorous character: a Un vrai 
type," said an officer, laughing at his singular manner and 
speech ; about them there moved upon their varied business 
the French infantry, hardy and matter-of-fact. 

With a sudden whir an aeroplane came flying over the 
tree tops, almost brushing them with its wings. And beyond 
these the heavy batteries roared their menace, and the ground 
shook with their wrath. It was a beautiful sight, too, in its 
way : the low concealed valley ; the blue figures moving 
amongst the trees; the Battery Commanders, cool and icy 
in their places of control, their clear, peremptory voices cleav- 
ing the welter of sound; the men at the guns like stokers 
at a furnace ; the sudden flash, the bursting roar, the recoil ; 
and in the gray sky, visible to the eye, the messenger of Death 
upon his way. Over all, ceaseless in their brooding, the French 
aviators flying low over the field of vision, the eyes of France 
fixed upon the enemy. 

We met the General at work in his dugout in another part 
of the field. It was another habitation to that of his Ger- 
man rival. "Voila mon Cabinet de travail," said he, ushering 
me into the smallest of little rooms by the roadside, with a 
table in it, a chair, a telephone, and a staff-map upon the wall. 
Some steps cut in the mud led down to his bedroom, which 
was like a steamer cabin. The bulb of an electric light hung 
beside his bed. "A present from the Boche," he said. Next 
door his Staff were at work, the telephone was constantly 
in action, and a dispatch rider occasionally came peppering 
up the road. 



THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME 67 

We climbed up into the field above. The same desolate 
waste, the same mournful void that war creates wherever it 
places its deadly hand. Upon the skyline I could see the 
faint outlines of the Bois de Trones, by which I had stood 
on the day of the British battle. French and English, hand 
in hand, good friends and loyal comrades, we go forward, 
never doubting, to the ultimate goal, sealing our compact 
with the blood of our peoples. 

Can we ever forget them, or they us? 

And then, as I stood here with the General — a man of 
the old type, vivid and martial, a soldier of France — some 
homing pigeons came flying through the gray sky, gentle 
of wing and faithful to their cause ; and out of the tarnished 
waste a lark rose singing into the heavens, above the griefs 
and the turmoil of men, unconscious of the tragedy about 
her. 



DINANT LA MORTE 1 
Camille David 

In the early days of September the terrible news began to 
circulate in Brussels: "Dinant is razed to the ground! Its 
inhabitants have been either massacred or deported ! Famine 
reigns amongst the people who are left !" This was a few days 
after Louvain, and the general depression made us loth to 
believe in a fresh misfortune. Yet the refugees gave exact 
details, and their grief was so sincere and their condition so 
wretched that we were finally convinced. One morning, de- 
siring to see for ourselves, we started out for the place of 
martyrdom, making a terrible pilgrimage through the devas- 
tated countryside and burnt villages. 

I had last seen Dinant on August 15th, when I watched the 
battle from the heights of Anhee as it raged from one hill to 
the next above the town. Now we found ourselves there once 
more, or rather on the site where Dinant had been. Under the 
citadel, which overhung the rock, was a hole. The old bell- 
tower of the thirteenth century cathedral, which had been 
built on the ruins of a Roman temple, was broken down. The 
tower looked pitiable — like a body without a head. The old 
houses which gave to the bright little town its archaic look and, 
withal, a note of unique gayety, were nothing but ruins, their 
scorched walls and tottering gables revealing the naked rocks 
behind. We went into the St. Medard quarter, which had 
been raked by fire and shell. The National Bank, the station, 
and a few houses are still standing; but their interiors show 
traces of unbridled pillage. In order to get at the safe in the 
bank the bandits had made a hole in the wall large enough for 
a man to pass through. 

1 From Contemporary Review, August, 191 5. Reprinted by permission. 

68 



DINANT LA MORTE 69 

Of the 1400 houses which spread lazily along the river not 
200 remain. The devastation is complete from Devant-Bou- 
vignes all the way to Anseremme, itself also three quarters 
destroyed. One would think that a cyclone must have passed 
that way. That human hands could have caused such disaster 
is beyond the power of the imagination to believe. And yet it 
was men who made this fire with their own hands by means of 
the grenades they threw. 

Towards the Rue Adolphe Sax the houses have been razed 
to the ground. In front of the church is a great empty space; 
the doorway of the cathedral looks on to the Meuse. Left and 
right, as far as one can see, there is not a roof, not a house, 
only blackened and crumbling walls, ruins, and rubbish. Higher 
up, the Hydrotherapeutic Institute, the villas, Bellevue Col- 
lege have disappeared. Above the hospital, which remains, 
the facade of a convent is riddled with holes. Over a wooden 
bridge supported by piles we pass the Hotel de Ville and the 
elementary school, both destroyed. In the streets there is a 
mournful silence as of death. The Maison du Peuple has been 
overthrown by some "comrades." We step into the church 
of St. Pierre, and see walls — and the sky. 

The horror continues right on to Leffe. As for noting what 
has been destroyed, it is far easier to write down what is left. 
The barracks, the police office, and the Athenaeum have been 
spared. With death in our hearts we return to the center of 
the city and in the direction of the Faubourg St. Nicolas. Of 
the Grande Rue, so picturesque with its old shops full of 
articles in leather and Dinant shells, nothing remains. We 
stumble over the bricks of ruined houses. The Palais de Jus- 
tice, the boarding-school, the Girls' Secondary School have not 
perished. But the St. Nicolas Church was set on fire. The 
Place de Meuse has been preserved. Guaranteed until the 
Sunday by the presence of the French on the left bank of the 
Meuse, it was subsequently spared through the intervention 
of a lady of German origin, from whom a Prussian soldier, 
nevertheless, stole 5000 francs' worth of jewelry. By what 



70 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

providential accident the Faubourg St. Paul suffered com- 
paratively little is not known. But towards the Rocher Bayard 
and further, and opposite at Neffe, the devastation begins 
again. 



If wealth had but been the only thing destroyed ! But add 
to it the human suffering such as Dante himself could not have 
imagined ! 

What had happened? 

From the first days of August the French artillery was in- 
stalled on the heights of the left bank and their infantry in 
the valley in the St. Medard quarter. The Germans had 
taken up their position on the right bank. During the night, 
like brigands, taking advantage of the darkness, they came 
down through the "Fonds de Leffe," and threw themselves 
upon the town, shooting with their rifles and causing terror 
amongst the inhabitants. Yet the town had been peaceful, 
and was anxious only with regard to general events. There 
were neither guns, nor rifles, nor soldiers, only civilians with- 
out arms. The arms had all been collected by the authorities. 
The garde civique had been disarmed and disbanded before 
August 15th. After the bombardment which took place at 
the time of the first battle between the French and Germans 
on August 15th, when some buildings on the left bank were 
destroyed, part of the population had fled. In the days which 
followed there were only small artillery duels. 

On Friday, August 21st, in the evening, began the awful 
sack of Dinant, which surpasses in horror the destruction of 
the town by Charles the Bold in the fifteenth century. It was 
half past nine at night. The town was calm and silent. The 
inhabitants were all indoors. Suddenly shots rang out, and 
dreadful groans were heard. A band of German soldiers was 
coming down the Rue St. Jacques firing into the windows of 
the houses. A man employed at the gasworks, Auguste Georges, 
was going into his house when he was killed. The butcher, 



DINANT LA MORTE 71 

Cleda, who ventured to look out, was wounded, and the sol- 
diers forced him to cry " Vive FEmpereur !" M. Sohet, hotel 
keeper, was hit in the stomach with the butt-end of a rifle. 

The terrified inhabitants took flight. Along the walls of the 
houses, in the dark, shadows of fleeing people might be seen. 
An octogenarian scrambled over a wall and managed to escape 
into a garden. The doors were broken in by the Prussians, 
and they entered the houses, stealing, pillaging, and smashing. 
Then, without going further into the town, they returned by 
the way they had come, and went up the Monte de Ciney. 

Saturday, August 2 2d, was quiet, except that towards eve- 
ning there was artillery thunder in the valley. 

Sunday was a terrible day. As early as a quarter past five 
in the morning, at dawn, the Germans, under the orders of 
Lieut. -Col. Blegen, began to bombard Dinant. Shells rained 
on the town. Soon the mitrailleuses, which were hidden in the 
trees, sent down a great shower of bullets. From the left bank 
the French replied vigorously. Hardly had the fight begun 
before several hundred Germans of the 108th Infantry Regi- 
ment advanced through the Fonds de Leffe and by the heights 
of St. Nicolas. The first victims fell at LefTe. 

The faithful took refuge in the Eglise des Premontres, where 
mass was being celebrated, whilst outside was the crack of 
rifle fire. It was half past six o'clock. The German soldiers 
burst into the church and drove out the worshipers. They 
had heard their last mass ! 

Protests and supplications aroused no pity in the barbarians. 
With the butt-ends of their rifles they separated the men from 
the women, and made them stand in a group whilst they shot 
into the middle of them under the horrified eyes of the women. 
About fifty civilians fell dead. The women uttered terrifying 
shrieks. At the door of his house, and in the presence of his 
wife and children, they killed M. Victor Poncelet. Blood- 
thirsty fury took possession of the soldier-assassins. Street by 
street and house by house they pillaged the town and set fire 
to it, destroying Dinant from top to bottom. It was between 



72 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

7 and 9 o'clock in the morning, in the Faubourg St. Pierre and 
in the Rue Grande, the center of the city, that this work of 
destruction took place. With wild shouts the soldiers of Wil- 
liam-the-Murderer chased the people from their houses, and 
struck down at random those who tried to escape. Soon the 
soldiers were throwing in hand grenades. Fire shot up and 
spread with terrible rapidity. Everything was in flames, 
crackling, splitting, falling. Long clouds of smoke arose from 
the burning valley and wreathed the surrounding hills. The 
flames licked the mountain and leapt up to redden the sky. 
The conflagration was striking, grandiose, dantesque. 

The valley was filled with awful noise. The sound of the 
falling houses, the roar of cannon, the cracking of rifles and 
guns, the hiss of bullets, the shouts of the soldiers, and the 
cries of the unfortunate inhabitants were all mingled. The 
Germans drove the population in groups to the places of tor- 
ture; 160, however, managed to take refuge in the grotto of 
Montfort and 400 in the grotto of Rondpeine ; they stayed 
there a day and a night without being discovered. Others 
were able to hide by day in cellars and by night in gardens. 

At 9 o'clock a pitiable cortege approached the prison. It was 
composed of men, women, and children, about 700 of them. 
With their hands held up and surrounded by soldiers, these 
martyrs crossed the burning town. Tears flowed, sobs, lamen- 
tations, prayers arose from among them. No one listened. 
The officers and soldiers were unmoved. Until dusk these 
wretched people were kept prisoners. The soldiers passed 
backwards and forwards in front of them, saying : " You will 
all be shot this evening." Evening arrived. Darkness fell 
slowly, so slowly, prolonging the terrible agony. The battle 
had come to an end. Namur having fallen, the French had 
orders to retire towards Philippeville. The Germans were 
masters of the town. 

At 6 o'clock a German captain had the women placed high 
up on the Montagne de la Croix. A cordon of infantry barred 
the street before them. Thirty steps away, against the wall of 



DINANT LA MORTE 73 

the garden of M. Tchoffen, the public prosecutor, in the Rue 
Leopold, at the corner of the Place d'Armes, a row of men was 
placed standing, and in front of them a second row kneeling. 
Opposite the public prosecutor's house soldiers were stationed 
ready to shoot. To avoid the ricochet of the bullets they were 
aiming slantwise. A little further on, waiting their turn, an- 
other group of inhabitants helplessly watched these lugubri- 
ous preparations. The German officer passes in front of the 
crowd in reserve and chooses more victims. At this tragic 
moment a thrill of horror goes through the condemned men 
and through the crowd of relations and friends who are look- 
ing on at the scene. The women implore and wring their 
hands and throw themselves on their knees, the children weep, 
the men cry : " Mercy ! Mercy ! we did not shoot, we had no 
arms. Have pity on us for our children's sake." 

It is in vain ! The German officer will listen to nothing. He 
takes up his position, shouts an order, lowers his sword. The 
rifles go off, the bullets fly, and men fall. A great clamor is 
heard which makes the rocks tremble. Women are fainting. 
. . . The dead now rest in M. Tchoffen's garden. A few 
flowers and some little wooden crosses stuck in the ground 
mark the two big graves. 

Not all the men, however, have been hit. About twenty 
were not touched. They fell down pell-mell amongst those 
who had been shot. Others were only wounded. One received 
a bullet in his head, another was hit by five bullets, another 
had his thigh perforated. All remain motionless in a pool of 
blood which gradually congeals, lying side by side with the 
corpses of their friends, now become cold and stiff in death. 
Not a cry, not a murmur, not a breath rises from this human 
heap. Agony and the will to live glue them to the pavement. 
Fear itself prevents their teeth from chattering. They feign 
death and await the darkness of the night. There is silence 
for a long, long time. Then a head lifts from among the dead 
in the shadow. Enemies are no longer to be seen near the 
prison. In a low voice, in a whisper, the owner speaks and says 



74 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

in Walloon: "Can you see any one over St. Nicolas way?" 
A man lying on his back opens his eyes and answers : "No, 
nobody." "Let us go into the house opposite," says young 
G — — . It is 8 o'clock and quite dark. The survivors, silently, 
with beating. hearts, revived by hope, rise up, cross the street 
with a run, plunge into a house, climb through the gardens, 
the unhurt dragging and supporting the wounded, and hide 
in the mountain. They are covered with dark blood which is 
not their own. They rub themselves with leaves and grass. 
For several days and nights they live on carrots and beets and 
other roots. The wounded are untended. Their comrades 
tear up their shirts for bandages. They suffer terribly from 
thirst. 



That tragic Sunday, August 23d, saw other massacres. 
In the prison civilians were shut up, men and women together. 
At 6 o'clock in the evening a big gun started shooting from 
the upper part of the mountain, and dropped a rain of bullets 
on the prisoners, who were in the courtyard. A woman fell 
pierced through the body. Three other people perished at 
her side. Soldiers ran up to kill them. In order to save himself 

Doctor D smeared his face with the blood of the victims 

and pretended to be dead. 

The butchery had been organized at various points in the 
town. Inhabitants who had taken refuge in cellars and were 
discovered were shot at once. At Leffe, at about 5 o'clock in 
the evening, the soldiers forced M. Himmer, the Argentine 
consul, director of the Oudin Works, a Frenchman, and fifty 
workmen, women, and children to come out of the cellars of 
the weaving factory, where they had fled. Four times did they 
set fire to the establishment. M. Himmer came out first with 
a white flag. "I am consul for Argentina," he said to the 
officer, "and I appeal to that country." What was that to 
the assassins? They were all shot. The officer said: "It 
would have been too much luck to spare you when your 



DINANT LA MORTE 75 

fellow citizens were dead." The toll of the dead at Leffe is 
horrible. 140 civilians were shot. There are only seven 
sound men left. 

In the garden next to that of M. Servais, ex-Secretary of 
the Commune, also shot, rest 80 of the inhabitants of Dinant. 
In the cemetery of the Faubourg de Leffe others lie buried. 
Others again to the right of the road, in a garden near the 
Catholic school, at the entrance to the Fonds de Leffe. And 
here it was the inhabitants shut up in the Couvent des Pre- 

montres who dug the grave. M. M told me, shaking with 

indignant feeling : 

They made us dig the grave, like martyrs, saying to us, "That's 
for you this evening." They made us bury our massacred fellow 
citizens. I saw seventeen bodies thrown into that enormous hole, 
and then the contents of three carts, each carrying fifteen murdered 
corpses. They were tossed in like bundles, without being identified. 

Towards half past six the German savages passed along the 

Rue St. Roch. Against the house of M. B a group of 

civilians was shot. Then the soldiers threw the bodies into the 
cellar, which has been walled up. Forty victims are in that 
charnel house. In the Rue En He a paralytic was shot in his 
chair. In the Rue d'Enfer a young fellow of fourteen was killed 
by a soldier. He had with him a little child whom a soldier 
tossed into the burning house of M. Francois G . 

At Neffe, a southern suburb of Dinant, armed bandits 
sacked, pillaged, and stole, with fire and slaughter. Under the 
railway viaduct they shot men, women, and children. An old 
woman and all her children were killed in a cellar. A man, his 
wife, and son and daughter were put against a wall and killed. 
An old man of sixty-five, his wife, his son-in-law, and the 
young wife were shot. Down at the river bank there was fur- 
ther butchery. Inhabitants of Neffe who had gone by boat 
to the Rocher Bayard suffered the same horrible fate. Amongst 
them Madame Collard, aged eighty-three, and her husband, 
and many women and children. Ninety-eight civilians were 



76 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

buried in M. B 's garden, according to the accounts of 

the German soldiers themselves. And whilst this awful car- 
nage was deluging the town with blood, the German soldiers 
gave demonstrations of their cowardice. For instance, this 
in the Faubourg St. Paul. Mme. L. P — — ■ relates : 

Soldiers came into my house. They struck me with their fists 
in the chest, smashed everything in the house, then, with a revolver 
pointed at me, dragged me out of doors. Other women were there 
under the threats of these brutes. They pushed us before them to 
the parapet at the waterside, exposing us to the French fire, whilst 
the coward Prussians stooped and fired, sheltering themselves 
behind women. 

It was there that Mdlle. Madeleine Massigny was killed. 

I have heard of four cases of violation, a young woman who 
died after the abuses of fifteen horrid bandits. I have also had 
an account of a young mother who was confronted with a 
choice between the strangling of her little girl and her own 
dishonor. It will be readily understood that names cannot be 
given, and that the population keeps religious silence with 
regard to these cases. 

Doctor A. L took refuge with his wife and a baby of a 

few months in a sewer. They had no food but a little sugar, 
and nothing to drink but the filthy water flowing by. To feed 
the child they had to damp the sugar with this noxious liquid. 
The horrible situation lasted two days. 

The kultur-bearers have refinements of cruelty. In the 
barracks at Leffe three hundred civilian prisoners were placed 
in line along the wall with their arms up. Behind them a 
pastor recited the prayers for the dead, whilst an officer worked 
an unloaded gun ! This torture was kept up for a quarter of an 
hour. It seemed a century long. In the Eglise St. Paul prison- 
ers were kept for five days. In the Eglise des Premontres an 
officer of the 108th Infantry came to demand a candle. He 
was given a taper. He refused it, and the sacred lamp was 
taken down. He was satisfied, and marched all round the 



DINANT LA MORTE 77 

assembly, jeering, and holding his revolver at the faces of the 
women. He carried his trophy away with a roar of laughter. 

Pillage and fire continued on the Monday and Tuesday. 
The soldiers drank as much wine as they could steal. They 
wallowed in murder and blood, celebrating their triumph glass 
in hand. Drunken officers sat down with their men. They 
obliged the inhabitants who had survived to be present at 
their orgies on pain of death. On Monday the soldiers, just to 
amuse themselves, killed three old men of eighty. On Tuesday, 
at half past five in the morning, soldiers scattered through the 
town, shouting and setting fire to the houses on the Quai de 
Meuse and in the Rue du Moulin des Batteurs. 

From the Monday processions had been formed. Surrounded 
by soldiers, who struck the French monks in the face with 
horsewhips, the prisoners were taken away towards Prussia, 
some by Ciney, others by Marche. About 400 went. How 
many will return ? And what must have been the sufferings of 
those innocent victims on the long routes, who had not been 
able to dress themselves suitably or get their boots, who had 
been torn from their wives and children, leaving behind them 
that nightmare of bloodshed and ruin. One had only stock- 
ings on his feet. Many were in sabots. Already the dead were 
strewn along the roads. On the left of the Ciney road, on the 
"Tienne d'Aurcy," lie buried four old men who were found 
with their hands bound, unable to go any further, and ex- 
hausted by suffering and fatigue. They were MM. Jules 
Monard (70), Leon Simon (65), Couillard (75), and Bouchat 
(73) . The farmer of Chesnois was harnessed between the shafts 
of a cart and forced to drag it up the hill of Sorinnes. 

Such is the true and sad story of Dinant. It remains for the 
world to pass its judgment. 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 1 

" Contact" (Alan Bott) 

[Captain Alan Bott was, before the World War, a correspondent of the 
London Daily Chronicle but soon enlisted in the British air forces. From 
his experiences on the Western Front were derived the personal narra- 
tives of which the account below is a part. They originally appeared 
in Blackwood' 's Magazine under the title "An Airman's Outings." He 
was later transferred to Palestine, where he was wounded and made 
prisoner by the Turks. The narrative has the merit of being equally 
good as an account of the righting airman's real experience and as a speci- 
men of simple but effective narration.] 

For weeks we had talked guardedly of "it" and "them" 
— of the greatest day of the Push and the latest form of war- 
fare. Details of the twin mysteries had been rightly kept 
secret by the red-hatted Olympians who really knew, though 
we of the fighting branches had heard sufficient to stimulate 
an appetite for rumor and exaggeration. Consequently we 
possessed our souls in impatience and dabbled in conjecture. 

Small forts moving on the caterpillar system of traction 
used for heavy guns were to crawl across No Man's Land, 
enfilade the enemy front line with quick-firing and machine- 
guns, and hurl bombs on such of the works and emplacements 
as they did not ram to pieces, — thus a confidential adjutant, 
who seemed to think he had admitted me into the inner circle 
of knowledge tenanted only by himself and the G. S. O. people 
(I, II, and III, besides untabbed nondescripts). Veterans 
gave tips on war in the open country, or chatted airily about 
another tour of such places as Le Catelet, Le Cateau, Mons, 

1 From "Cavalry of the Clouds," copyright, 1918, by Doubleday, Page & Co. 
Reprinted by permission. 

78 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 79 

the Maubeuge district, and Namur. The cautious listened in 
silence, and distilled only two facts from the dubious mixture 
of fancy. The first was that we were booked for a big advance 
one of these fine days ; and the second that, after the over- 
ture of bombardment, new armored cars, caterpillared and 
powerfully armed, would make their bow to Brother Boche. 

The balloon of swollen conjecture floated over the back of 
the Front until it was destroyed by the quick-fire of authentic 
orders, which necessarily revealed much of the plan and many 
of the methods. On the afternoon of September 14 all the 
officers of our aerodrome were summoned to an empty shed. 
There we found our own particular general, who said more to 
the point in five minutes than the rumorists had said in five 
weeks. There was to be a grand attack next morning. The 
immediate objectives were not distant, but their gain would 
be of enormous value. Every atom of energy must be concen- 
trated on the task. It was hoped that the element of surprise 
would be on our side, helped by a new engine of war, christened 
the Tank. The nature of this strange animal, male and female, 
was then explained. 

Next came an exposition of the part allotted to the Flying 
Corps. No German machines could be allowed near enough 
to the lines for any observation. We must shoot all Hun 
machines at sight and give them no rest. Our bombers should 
make life a burden on the enemy lines of communication. 
Infantry and transport were to be worried, whenever possible, 
by machine-gun fire from above. Machines would be detailed 
for contact work with our infantry. 

No more bubbles of hot air were blown around the mess 
table. Only the evening was between us and the day of days. 
The time before dinner was filled by the testing of machines 
and the writing of those cheerful, non-committal letters that 
precede big happenings at the Front. Our flight had visitors 
to dinner, but the shadow of to-morrow was too insistent for 
the racket customary on a guest night. It was as if the 
electricity had been withdrawn from the atmosphere and 



80 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

condensed for use when required. The dinner talk was curiously 
restrained. The usual shop chatter prevailed, leavened by 
snatches of bantering cynicism from those infants of the world 
who thought that to a beau sabreur one must juggle verbally 
with life, death, and Archie shells. Even the war babies (three 
of them died very gallantly before we reassembled for break- 
fast next day) had bottled most of their exuberance. Under- 
standing silences were sandwiched between yarns. A wag 
searched for the Pagliacci record, and set the gramophone to 
churn out "Vesti la Giubba." The guests stayed to listen 
politely to a few revue melodies, and then slipped away. The 
rest turned in immediately, in view of the jobs at early dawn. 

" Good-night, you chaps," said one of the flight commanders. 
"See you over Mossy-Face in the morning!" 

In the morning some of us saw him spin earthwards over 
Mossy-Face Wood, surrounded by Hun machines. 

Long before the dawn of September 15, I awoke to the roar 
of engines, followed by an overhead drone as a party of bomb- 
ers circled round until they were ready to start. When this 
noise had died away, the dull boom of an intense bombard- 
ment was able to make itself heard. I rolled over and went to 
sleep again, for my own show was not due to start until three 
hours later. The Flying Corps program on the great day 
was a marvel of organization. The jobs fitted into one another 
and into the general tactical scheme of the advance as exactly 
as the parts of a flawless motor. At no time could enemy craft 
steal towards the lines to spy out the land. Every sector was 
covered by defensive patrols which traveled northward and 
southward, southward and northward, eager to pounce on 
any black-crossed stranger. Offensive patrols moved and 
fought over Boche territory until they were relieved by other 
offensive patrols. The machines on artillery observation were 
thus worried only by Archie, and the reconnaissance forma- 
tions were able to do their work with little interruption, ex- 
cept when they passed well outside the patrol areas. Through- 
out the day those guerillas of the air, the bombing craft, 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 81 

went across and dropped eggs on anything between general 
headquarters and a railway line. A machine first made known 
the exploit of the immortal Tank that waddled down High 
Street, Flers, spitting bullets and inspiring sick fear. And 
there were several free-lance stunts, such as aeroplane attacks 
on reserve troops or on trains. 

The three squadrons attached to our aerodrome had to the 
day's credit two long reconnaissances, three offensive patrols, 
and four bomb raids. Six Hun machines were destroyed on 
these shows, and the bombers did magnificent work at vital 
points. At 2 a.m. they dropped eggs on the German Somme 
headquarters. An hour later they deranged the railway sta- 
tion of a large garrison town. For the remaining time before 
sunset they were not so busy. They merely destroyed two 
ammunition trains, cut two railway lines, damaged an impor- 
tant railhead, and sprayed a bivouac ground. 

An orderly called me at 4.15 a.m. for the big offensive 
patrol. The sky was a dark gray curtain decorated by faintly 
twinkling stars. I dressed to the thunderous accompaniment 
of the guns, warmed myself with a cup of hot cocoa, donned 
my flying kit, and hurried to the aerodrome. We gathered 
around C, the patrol leader, who gave us final instructions 
about his method of attack. I tested my gun and climbed 
into the machine. By now the east had turned to a light gray 
with pink smudges from the forefinger of sunrise. Punctually 
at five o'clock the order, " Start up!" passed down the long 
line of machines. 

"Contact, sir!" said the flight-commander's mechanic, 
his hand on a propeller blade. 

" Contact," repeated the pilot. Around swung the propeller, 
and the engine began a loud metallic roar, then softened as it 
was throttled down. The pilot waved his hand, the chocks were 
pulled from under the wheels, and the machine moved forward. 
The throttle was again opened full out as the bus raced into 
the wind until flying speed had been attained, when it skimmed 
gently from the ground. 



82 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

The morning light increased every minute, and the gray of 
the sky was merging into blue. The faint, hovering ground- 
mist was not sufficient to screen our landmarks. The country 
below was a shadowy patchwork of colored pieces. The woods, 
fantastic shapes of dark green, stood out strongly from the 
mosaic of brown and green fields. The pattern was divided 
and subdivided by the straight, poplar-bordered roads pecu- 
liar to France. We passed on to the dirty strip of wilderness 
which is the actual Front. The battered villages and disorderly 
ruins looked like hieroglyphics traced on wet sand. A sea of 
smoke rolled over the ground for miles. It was a by-product of 
the most terrific bombardment in the history of trench war- 
fare. Through it hundreds of gun flashes twinkled like the 
lights of a Chinese garden. 

Having reached a height of 12,000 feet, we crossed the 
trenches south of Bapaume. As the danger that stray bullets 
might fall on friends no longer existed, pilots and observers 
fired a few rounds into space to make sure their guns were 
behaving properly. Archie began his frightfulness early. He 
concentrated on the leader's machine, but the still dim light 
spoiled his aim, and many of the bursts were dotted between 
the craft behind. I heard the customary wouff! wouff! wouff! 
followed in one case by the hs-s-s-s-s of passing fragments. 
We swerved and dodged to disconcert the gunners. After five 
minutes of hide-and-seek, we shook off this group of Archie 
batteries. 

The flight commander headed for Mossy-Face Wood, scene 
of many air battles and bomb raids. Around it are clustered 
several aerodromes. One of these, just east of the wood, was 
the home of the Fokker star, Boelcke. C. led us to it, for it 
was his great ambition to account for Germany's best pilot. 
As we approached, I looked down and saw eight machines 
with black Maltese crosses on their planes, about three thou- 
sand feet below. They had clipped wings of a peculiar white- 
ness, and they were ranged one above the other like platforms 
on scaffolding. A cluster of small scouts swooped down from 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 83 

Heaven-knows-what height and hovered above us; but C. 
evidently did not see them, for he dived steeply on the Huns 
underneath, accompanied by the two machines nearest him. 
The other group of enemies then dived. 

I looked up and saw a narrow biplane, apparently a Roland, 
rushing towards our bus. My pilot (in those days I was not 
myself a pilot, but acted as observer) turned on a steep bank 
and side-slipped to disconcert the Boche's aim. The black- 
crossed hawk swept over at a distance of less than a hundred 
yards. I raised my gun-mounting, sighted, and pressed the 
trigger. Three shots rattled off and my Lewis gun ceased fire. 
Intensely annoyed at being cheated out of such a splendid 
target, I applied immediate action, pulled back the cocking- 
handle, and pressed the trigger again. Nothing happened. 
After one more immediate action test, I examined the gun and 
found that an incoming cartridge and an empty case were 
jammed together in the breech. To remedy the stoppage, I 
had to remove spade-grip and body-cover. As I did this, I 
heard an ominous ta-ta-ta-ta-ta from the returning German 
scout. My pilot cart-wheeled round and made for the Hun, 
his gun spitting continuously through the propeller. The two 
machines raced at each other until only some fifty yards sep- 
arated them. Then the Boche swayed, turned aside, and put 
his nose down. We dropped after him, with our front machine- 
gun still speaking. The Roland's glide merged into a dive, and 
we imitated him. Suddenly a streak of flame came from his 
petrol tank, and the next second he was rushing earthwards 
with two streamers of flame trailing behind. 

I was unable to see the end of this vertical dive, for two more 
single-seaters were upon us. They plugged away while I 
remedied the stoppage, and several bullets ventilated the fuse- 
lage quite close to my cockpit. When my gun was itself again, 
I changed the drum of ammunition and hastened to fire at 
the nearest Hun. He was evidently unprepared, for he turned 
and moved across our tail. As he did so, I raked his bus from 
stem to stern. I looked at him hopefully, for the range was 



84 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

very short, and I expected to see him drop towards the ground 
at several miles a minute. He sailed on serenely. This is an 
annoying habit of enemy machines when one is sure that, by 
the rules of the game, they ought to be destroyed. The machine 
in question was probably hit, however, for it did not return, 
and I saw it begin a glide as though the pilot meant to land. 
We switched our attention to the remaining Hun, but this one 
was not anxious to fight alone. He dived a few hundred feet, 
with tail well up, looking for all the world like a trout when 
it drops back into water. Afterwards he flattened out and 
went east. 

During our fights we had become separated from the re- 
mainder of our party. I searched all round the compass, but 
could find neither friend nor foe. We returned to the aero- 
drome where hostile craft were first sighted. There was no 
sign of C.'s machine or of the others who dived on the first 
group of Huns. Several German machines were at rest in the 
aerodrome. 

Finding ourselves alone, we passed on towards the lines. I 
twisted my neck in every direction, as if it were made of rub- 
ber, for over enemy country only a constant lookout above, 
below, and on all sides can save a machine from a surprise 
attack. After a few minutes, I spotted six craft bearing to- 
wards us from a great height. Through field glasses I was able 
to see their black crosses, and I fingered my machine-gun ex- 
pectantly. The strangers dived in two lots of three. I waited 
until the first three were within 300 yards' range and opened 
fire. One of them swerved away, but the other two passed 
right under us. Something sang to the right, and I found that 
part of a landing wire was dangling helplessly from its socket. 
I thanked whatever gods there be that it was not a flying wire, 
and turned to meet the next three Huns. We side-slipped, and 
they pulled out of their dive well away from us. With nose 
down and engine full out, we raced towards the lines and 
safety. Three of the attackers were unable to keep up with us 
and we left them behind. 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 85 

The other three Germans, classed by my pilot as Halber- 
stadts, had more than our speed. They did not attack at 
close quarters immediately, but flew 200 to 300 yards behind, 
ready to pounce at their own moment. Two of them got be- 
tween my gun and our tail-plane, so that they were safe from 
my fire. The third was slightly above our height, and for his 
benefit I stood up and rattled through a whole ammunition- 
drum. Here let me say I do not think I hit him, for he was not 
in difficulties. He dived below us to join his companions, 
possibly because he did not like being under fire when they 
were not. To my surprise and joy, he fell slick on one of the 
other two Hun machines. This latter broke into two pieces, 
which fell like stones. The machine responsible for my luck 
side-slipped, spun a little, recovered, and went down to land. 
The third made off east. In plain print and at a normal time, 
this episode shows little that is comic. But when it happened, 
I was in a state of high tension, and this, combined with the 
startling realization that a Hun pilot had saved me and de- 
stroyed his friend, seemed irresistibly comic. I cackled with 
laughter, and was annoyed because my pilot did not see the 
joke. 

We reached the lines without further trouble from anything 
but Archie. The pink streaks of daybreak had now disap- 
peared beneath the whole body of the sunrise, and the sky was 
of that intense blue which is the secret of France. What was 
left of the ground-mist shimmered as it congealed in the sun- 
light. The pall of smoke from the guns had doubled in volume. 
The Ancre sparkled brightly. We cruised around in a search 
for others of our party, but found none. A defensive patrol 
was operating between Albert and the trenches. We joined 
it for half an hour, at the end of which I heard a " Halloa!" 
from the speaking tube. 

" What's up now?" I asked. 

" Going to have a look at the war," was the pilot's reply. 

Before I grasped his meaning he had shut off the engine 
and we were gliding towards the trenches. At 1200 feet we 



S6 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

switched on, flattened out, and looked for any movement 
below. There was no infantry advance at the moment, but 
below Courcelette what seemed to be two ungainly masses of 
black slime were slithering over the ground. I rubbed my 
eyes and looked again. One of them actually crawled among 
the scrap heaps that fringed the ruins of the village. Only 
then did the thought that they might be Tanks suggest itself. 
Afterwards I discovered that this was so. 

The machine rocked violently as a projectile hurtled by 
underneath us. The pilot remembered the broken landing- 
wire and steered for home. When we had landed and written 
a combat report, we compared notes with others who had re- 
turned from the expedition. C, we learned, was down at last, 
after seventeen months of flying on active service, with only 
one break for any appreciable time. He destroyed one more 
enemy before the Boches got him. In the dive he got right 
ahead of the two machines that followed him. As these hur- 
ried to his assistance, they saw an enemy plane turn over, 
show a white, gleaming belly, and drop in zigzags. C.'s bus was 
then seen to heel over into a vertical dive, and plunge down, 
spinning rhythmically on its axis. Probably he was shot dead 
and fell over on to the joystick, and this put the machine to 
its last dive. The petrol tank of the second machine to arrive 
among the Huns was plugged by a bullet, and the pilot was 
forced to land. Weeks later, his observer wrote us a letter 
from a prison camp in Hanover. The third bus got back to 
tell the tale. 

C. was one of the greatest pilots produced by the war. He 
was utterly fearless, and had more time over the German lines 
to his credit that anybody else in the Flying Corps. It was part 
of his fatalistic creed that Archie should never be dodged, and 
he would go calmly ahead when the A. A. guns were at their 
best. Somehow, the bursts never found him. He had won 
both the D.S.O. and the M.C. for deeds in the air. Only the 
evening before, when asked lightly if he was out for a V.C., 
he said he would rather get Boelcke than the V.C. — and in 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 87 

the end Boelcke probably got him, for he fell over the famous 
German pilot's aerodrome, and that day the German wireless 
announced that Boelcke had shot down two more machines. 
Peace to the ashes of a fine pilot and a very brave man ! 

Two observers, other than C.'s passenger, had been killed 
during our patrol. One of them was " Uncle," a captain in 
the Northumberland Fusiliers. A bullet entered the large 
artery of his thigh. He bled profusely and lost consciousness 
in the middle of a fight with two Huns. When he came to, a 
few minutes later, he grabbed his gun and opened fire on an 
enemy. After about forty shots the clatter of the gun stopped, 
and through the speaking tube a faint voice told the pilot to 
look round. He did so, and saw a Maltese-crossed biplane 
falling in flames. Uncle faded into unconsciousness again, and 
never came back. It is more than possible that if he had put a 
tourniquet round his thigh, instead of continuing the fight, 
he might have lived. A great death, you say? One of many 
such. Only the day before I had helped to lift the limp body 
of Paddy from the floor of an observer's cockpit. He had been 
shot over the heart. He fainted, recovered his senses for ten 
minutes, and kept two Huns at bay until he died, by which 
time the trenches were reached. 

Imagine yourself under fire in an aeroplane at 10,000 feet. 
Imagine that only a second ago you were in the country of 
shadows. Imagine yourself feeling giddy and deadly sick 
from loss of blood. Imagine what is left of your consciousness 
to be stabbed insistently by a throbbing pain. Now imagine 
how you would force yourself in this condition to grasp a 
machine-gun in your numbed hand, pull back the cocking 
handle, take careful aim at a fast machine, allowing for de- 
flection, and fire until you sink into death. Some day I hope 
I shall be allowed to visit Valhalla for a few minutes, to con- 
gratulate Paddy and Uncle. 

We refreshed ourselves with hot breakfast and cold baths. 
In the mess the fights were reconstructed. Sudden silences 
were frequent — an unconscious tribute to C. and the other 



88 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

casualties. At lunch- time we were cheered by the news that 
the first and second objectives had been reached, that Mar- 
tinpuich, Courcelette, and Flers had fallen, and that the 
Tanks had behaved well. After lunch I rested a while before 
the long reconnaissance, due to start at three. 

Six machines were detailed for this job, but a faulty engine 
kept one of them on the ground. The observers marked the 
course on their maps, and wrote out lists of railway stations. 
We set off towards Arras. Archie hit out as soon as we crossed 
to his side of the front. He was especially dangerous that 
afternoon, as if determined to avenge the German defeat of 
the morning. Each bus in turn was encircled by black bursts, 
and each bus in turn lost height, swerved, or changed its course 
to defeat the gunner's aim. A piece of H.E. hit our tail-plane, 
and stayed there until I cut it out for a. souvenir when we had 
returned. 

The observers were kept busy with notebook and pencil, 
for the train movement was far greater than the average, and 
streaks of smoke courted attention on all the railways. Roll- 
ing stock was correspondingly small, and the counting of the 
trucks in the sidings was not difficult. Road and canal trans- 
port was plentiful. As evidence of the urgency of all this traffic, 
I remarked that no effort at concealment was made. On 
ordinary days, a German train always shut off steam when we 
approached; and I have often seen transport passing along 
the road one minute, and not passing along the road the next. 
On September 1 5 the traffic was too urgent for time to be lost 
by hide-and-seek. 

We passed several of our offensive patrols, each of whom 
escorted us while we were on their beat. It was curious that 
there was no activity on the enemy aerodromes. Until we 
passed Mossy-Face on the last lap of the homeward journey 
we saw no Hun aircraft. Even there the machines with black 
crosses flew very low, and did not attempt to offer battle. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened until we were about 
to cross the trenches north of Peronne. Archie then gave a 



A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES 89 

wonderful display. One of his chunks swept the left aileron 
from the leader's machine, which banked vertically, almost 
rolled over, and began to spin. For two thousand feet the 
irregular drop continued, and the observer gave up hope. 
Luckily for him, the pilot was not of the same mind, and 
managed to check the spin by juggling with his rudder con- 
trols. The bus flew home, left wing well down, with the ob- 
server leaning far out to the right to restore equilibrium, while 
the icy rush of air boxed his ears. 

We landed, wrote our reports, and took them to Headquar- 
ters. The day's work had been done, which was all that mat- 
tered to any extent, and a very able general told us it was 
"dom good." But many a day passed before any one sat in 
the seats left vacant by Uncle and Paddy. 

And so to bed, until we were called for another early morn- 
ing show. 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 1 

Herman Whitaker 

[Herman Whitaker (1867- ) was born and educated in England. 
After serving in the British Army he spent several years in northern 
Canada and then removed to California. He has written several novels 
of frontier life. He has served as a war correspondent in Mexico and in 
France. This vivid sketch, which omits a number of paragraphs of 
the original, is an admirable example of popular descriptive writing of 
the war, and not only gives us a first-hand account of the capture of the 
first German submarine by the American forces, but also reproduces the 
atmosphere and spirit of the American navy in the World War.] 

From the train window approaching the base I obtained my 
first view of "Sims's circus," as the flotilla has been named by 
the irreverent ensign. At least, I obtained my first astonished 
view of the minor portion thereof that chanced to be in port. 
For the base admiral is a most efficient man. His offices and 
house windows both overlook the water, and it's said by our 
skippers that his idea of heaven is "a harbor clear of ships and 
every destroyer at sea." 

I may add from personal observation that never was there 
a man who did so much to make his idea of heaven obtain on 
earth. Nothing short of a " salty condenser " will procure from 
him a stay in port — which reminds me of a question put by a 
green ensign in our wardroom one day: "Is the water we 
drink pure enough to use in our boilers?" 

To which was given in indignant chorus : "Of course not ! 
What do you think you are?" 

Returning again to the flotilla. A convoy was ready to sail, 
a dozen or so of our destroyers were. to be seen nestling like 
speckled chickens under the wings of the mother repair ships. 

1 From Independent, June 1 and 8, 1918. Also in Herman Whitaker's "Hunt- 
ing the German Shark." Copyrighted 1918, by The Century Company. Re- 
printed by permission. 

90 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 91 

I said "speckled." It is, however, too weak a term for the 
"dazzle" paint with which they were bedaubed. No wonder 
the irreverent ensign dubbed them "brick-yards." 

Barred, striped, blotched, smudged, ring-straked with vivid 
pinks, arsenic greens, blowsy reds, violent blues, they looked 
like — like nothing in the world unless it be that most poison- 
ous of drinks, a 'Frisco pousse-cafe. All of the giraffes, zebras, 
leopards, and tigers ever assembled in the "World's Greatest 
Aggregation" exhibit conventional patterns in comparison 
with this destroyer camouflage. The exception to this blazing 
color scheme, a recent arrival from home, looked in her dull 
lead paint like a Puritan maiden that had fallen by accident 
into a blowsy company of painted Jezebels. 

The vessel I went out on had struck America's first blow in 
the war by attacking one of the submarines that opposed our 
transports in the Atlantic. The thought was hot in my mind 
when after boarding her my eyes wandered from the knifelike 
bows back over the shotted guns, grim torpedo tubes, along 
the low, rakish hull to the stern, where two depth mines hung 
poised for instant use. 

Of all the enginery of destruction produced in the war, there 
is no weapon more terrible than these. The explosion of one 
lifts a column of water thirty yards wide fifty feet above the 
sea. One that was discharged nearly 200 yards away from a 
30,000-ton ocean liner heaved her up six inches in the water. 
So terrible are they that destroyers only drop them when 
running at high speed to insure a "get-away," and even then 
the iron floor plates of the boiler room are often lifted by the 
concussion. 

From the bridge I watched this slender arrow of a ship slip 
out through the harbor headlands, where a number of other 
destroyers were at work combing the offing for submarines 
before the convoy came out. They were beautiful to see, 
shooting like a school of rainbow flying fish over the long 
green seas ; careening on swift turns, laying the white lace 
of their wakes over sixty square miles of sea. Among them, 



92 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

graceful as a swallow, was the unfortunate vessel which, tor- 
pedoed two weeks later, now lies with sixty-four of our brave 
lads at the bottom of the sea. It is only necessary to record 
that she did not die unavenged. 

Meanwhile there had been no let up in the combing of the 
offing for submarines. Here and there, back and forth, the 
destroyers swooped with birdlike circlings, and no words can 
describe the thoroughness of the watch upon the sea. From 
the bridge by officers and quartermasters, by the men in the 
crows' nests fore and aft, by the deck lookouts ahead, amid- 
ships, and astern, vigilant watch was maintained. Multiply 
this steady eye-searching by the number of destroyers and 
you can easily imagine that scarcely an inch of ocean remained 
for more than a minute unswept by human eye. And yet — 
Fritz was there. 

There ? Why, for two days he had been there lying in wait 
for the convoy which was now poking cautiously out through 
the heads, and when he attacked it was like the leap of a lone 
wolf on a flock with the following rush of shepherd dogs at his 
throat. As he rose to take his sight at the leading steamer a 
destroyer almost ran him down. Indeed it was going full speed 
astern to avoid the collision when his periscope showed above 
water. 

It was only an instant, and the periscope was of the ringer 
variety, an inch and a half in diameter. It was raised in that 
instant scarcely a foot above the water, but was still picked 
up by the sharp, young eyes of the lookout on the next de- 
stroyer. The submarine had submerged at once, but rushing 
along his wake the destroyer dropped a depth mine that 
wrecked the motors, damaged the oil leads, blew off the rudder, 
tipped the stern up, and sent the "sub" down on a headlong 
dive fully two hundred feet. 

Afterward the commander said that he thought she would 
never stop. In a desperate effort to check her before she was 
crushed by deep-sea pressure he blew out all his four water 
ballast tanks and so came shooting back up with such velocity 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 93 

that the "sub" leaped thirty feet out of the water like a 
beaching whale. 

Instantly, the first destroyer, which had swung on a swift 
circle, charged and dropped a second depth mine as the sub- 
marine went down again. As the first cleared out of the way 
the second destroyer opened with her bow guns on the conning 
tower, which was now showing again. 

Having no rudder the "sub" was "porpoising" along, now 
up, now down, and every time the conning tower showed the 
destroyer sent a shot whistling past it. They had fired three 
shots each before the hatch flew up and the crew came stream- 
ing out and ranged along the deck with hands up. 

As the destroyers hove alongside, covering the crew with 
their guns, two of the men were seen to run back below. They 
were only gone a minute. But that was sufficient. Un- 
doubtedly they had opened the sea cocks and scuttled the 
vessel, for she sank three minutes thereafter. 

The crew jumped into the water and were hauled aboard 
the destroyer as fast as they could catch a line, all but one 
poor chap who could not swim and was nearly drowned before 
he was seen. Then in vivid contrast to the German practice 
under similar circumstances, two of our men leaped over- 
board and held him up till he could be hauled aboard. 

All had happened in no more than ten minutes from the 
dropping of the first depth charge. 

How I ached to talk to those prisoners ! But discipline de- 
manded that we keep our stations ; neither is a large convoy 
to be held up while a correspondent chatters. We moved on, 
leaving one destroyer to take the prisoners back to the base. 

But I heard a good deal more about them afterward. The 
bag consisted of one captain-lieutenant, one lieutenant, one 
ober-lieutenant, one ober-engineer, and thirty-six men. As 
the "sub" had been out from port about six days and had 
come straight to our base, it carried down with it a full comple- 
ment of twelve torpedoes ; a loss greater than that of the 
submarine. 



94 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

The crew appeared to be well nourished, but the faces of the 
officers, in particular, were deeply lined, haggard from strain 
and nervous anxiety. They all appeared stolidly indifferent 
to capture. Indeed, after they had been given coffee and 
sandwiches — contrast this treatment with that accorded by 
a German submarine commander to the murdered crew of the 
Belgian Prince — the crew began to sing. When they were 
placed in the boats to go ashore on the first lap of their journey 
to a prison camp, they gave their captors three cheers. 

The prisoners were cross-examined, of course, and from a 
plentiful chaff of misinformation were gleaned a few kernels 
of truth. The commander said, for instance, that no submarine 
captain who knew his business would waste a torpedo on a 
destroyer ! That which caused our first casualty did not come 
from the hand of a "greenhorn" out on his first voyage ! All 
very nice and friendly, but in course of an intimate conversa- 
tion with the ensign in whose cabin he was billeted for the 
night, he let out the fact that every submarine kept two 
torpedoes gauged for a depth of six feet — ■ destroyers, of 
course ! 

The piece of information that most concerned us came in a 
radio three hours later — the base port was "closed to com- 
merce." The poor harmless submarine that would not waste 
a torpedo on a destroyer, not even if it went to sleep on the 
water, had sown the ofhng with mines. All those evolutions 
of ours, swallowlike dips and swoopings, had been executed in 
a mine field. 

I confess to a little gasp. But gasps, if you are given that 
way, come thick and fast on a destroyer. 

All the time a stream of radios had been coming up to the 
bridge from shore stations hundreds of miles away, from ships 
far out at sea, from patrol boats and mine sweepers reporting 
subs. Some were so close that we were heading across their 
course. Others came from a great distance — up the Channel, 
the Bay of Biscay, north of Scotland; as far off as the 
Mediterranean. 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 95 

While they were coming in the sun rolled down its western 
slant and hung poised for a few moments in a glory of crimson 
and gold before it slipped on down into a purple sea. Above 
stretched a dappled vault that blazed in rainbow color, save 
where in the west a great tear in the radiant tapestries revealed 
a wall of pale jade. 

It was intensely beautiful, so lovely that the mind refused 
further commerce with the petty squabbles of man; refused 
to picture the sea murderers that were lying in wait beneath 
those jeweled waters. 

That evening displayed destroyer life at its best. A brilliant 
moon — which the " bridge" most fluently cursed for an ally 
of the Boche — laid a path of silver along the sleepy sea. Our 
boat laid her long, slim cheek against the slow, soft waves 
lovingly as a girl on that of her lover. From the deck below a 
mixed tinkle of a mandolin and guitar came floating up to the 
bridge, accompanying a mixed repertoire of ragtime and those 
sentimental ballads which the sailor so dearly loves. 

It had quite the flavor of a Coney Island picnic, but, once 
every hour, a dark figure slowly raised and lowered the guns 
and swung them the round of the firing circle. The gunners 
were taking no chances of the mechanism " freezing" through 
cold, stiffened grease, nor failure of the electric sighting 
lamps. 

This remarkable weather held till we dropped our convoy 
well out of the danger zone and picked up a second inward 
bound at a rendezvous a hundred miles further south. Two 
days later we gave half of our charge to a British flotilla that 
led it on other ways. We had expected to drop the remaining 
ships on the following morning, but destiny, alias the base 
admiral, decreed otherwise. Piqued, no doubt, by his small 
bag of one small ship the preceding week, Fritz had broken 
into waters which, for him, were extremely unsafe, and was 
shooting right and left, like a drunken cowboy on the Fourth 
of July. A radio informed us at dawn : 

"Area X is closed." 



96 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

This meant the delivery of each ship at its port. During 
the additional day and night required to do this subs were 
operating to the. right of us, subs to- the left of us, subs in 
front, subs behind us. Often we crossed their courses, but 
though they sank several ships around us that were uncon- 
voyed, they left us strictly alone. 

Twice the alarm sounded "general quarters" and we all 
piled out — a certain correspondent with his hair standing 
on end — to find the alarm was caused by a short circuit. 
Twice during the night porpoises charged the ship along 
gleaming wakes of phosphorescence and turned the hair of 
the engine room crews gray with emergency calls for full 
speed astern. But without hitch or mishap we delivered our 
ships at their destinations. 

All the last day the wind had been stiffening. After we 
headed back for the base it raised to half a gale, real destroyer 
weather. As we sat at supper in the wardroom that night the 
twinkle in Admiral Sims's eye was recalled when, with celerity 
that almost equaled sleight of hand, the tablecloth slid with 
its load of food and dishes swiftly to the floor. 

The casual manner in which the steward accepted and 
swept up the ruin betrayed familiarity with the phenomenon. 
When he reset the table, we held the tablecloth down and he 
had got safely to the coffee when, with his cup poised at his 
lip, the skipper tobogganed on his chair back to the transom. 
Swallowing the coffee while she hung in balance, he came back 
to us on the return roll. 

Profiting by his commander's example, the executive officer, 
who sat opposite, had hooked his ankles around those of the 
table; so took it with him to the other transom. When it 
returned, further journeyings were restrained by a rope lash- 
ing, but that unfortunately had no effect on the motion. It 
kept on just the same ; grew worse ; more of it ; then some. 

By midnight the vessel was rearing like a frightened horse 
and rolling like a barrel churn, a queer mixture of metaphor 
and motion. A Western " outlaw" had nothing on that boat. 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 97 

She would rear, shiver with rage just as though she were try- 
ing to shake the bridge off her back; plunge forward in a 
wild buck with her back humped and screws in the air. 

It was sickening. When she did her best and beastliest, the 
waves would drop from under, leaving two thirds of her 
length exposed; then, when the thousand tons of her came 
down on the water, she raised everything animate and inani- 
mate that was not bolted down to the deck. I was lifted so 
often out of my bunk that I spent almost half the night in 
midair, and am now quite convinced of the possibility of 
levitation. 

I confess to making a modest breakfast on one dill pickle. 
While I was engaged in the gingerly consumption thereof the 
wardroom comforted me with the news that this was "only 
half the blow," and that we might "expect the other half 
before we made port." They assured me it was fair weather 
by comparison with a nine days' gale they had ridden out 
last month ; fine weather when measured by a blow the pre- 
ceding trip when for thirty-six hours the waves swept her 
from stem to stern; the living compartments were flooded; 
everything and everybody wet; freezing to boot, while the 
wind howled through the rigging at no miles an hour. Think 
of it, you folks who live in warm houses, work in steam-heated 
offices ! 

Fair or fine, the bridge was nearly dipping its ends when I 
climbed up there after — after the dill pickle. At every 
plunge her nose would go under a solid sea and we would 
have to duck to avoid flying water that went over the top of 
the bridge. Watery mist veiled the tossing seas. All night 
we had been shoved along by a five-knot current running by 
dead reckoning. It was now impossible to take a "sight" to 
establish position ; so just as a lost boy might inquire his way 
from a policeman we ran inshore to a lightship to get a new fix. 

The lightship keeper megaphoned a direction which in his 
unnautical language amounted to this. If we would proceed 
so many blocks to the northward, then take the first turning 



98 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

to the left after we passed a lighthouse, we should come into a 
harbor where lay the half dozen ships we were to escort back 
to our base. 

The direction proved correct. As the convoy came filing 
out after us a few hours later I was able to see for myself one 
of those humorous flashes that sometimes lighten the gloom 
of the radios. Perceiving still another vessel in harbor after 
the convoy came out our skipper sent a radio to inquire if 
she would care to make use of our escort. 

He received a polite reply: " Thanks very much. Think 
I'll stay in. I was torpedoed going out yesterday." 

She was one of the luckless of the preceding day. 

The delivery of this convoy at the base the following day 
completed my cruise. During a period of twelve days we had 
steamed 1600 miles and convoyed a total number of sixty- 
odd vessels to and fro in the danger zone. Under the old 
patrol system, when our fleet first began its labors, the Ger- 
mans were sinking from thirty to fifty ships a week and the 
seas through which we sailed were loaded with wreckage, 
dead cows, horses, pigs, lumber, barrels, anything that would 
float. Smashed boats were often found, and sometimes 
drowned people held up from sinking by life preservers. But 
since the convoy system was adopted, wreckage is seldom 
seen ; will, with its extension to all ships in the near future, 
become a thing of the past. 

In the great improvement already effected our crews and 
captains have displayed a fine part. The sixty vessels of ours 
were simply one small item in the thousands convoyed through 
the danger zone with a loss, as aforesaid, of only one eighth of 
one per cent. In the course of this duty the American flotilla 
has steamed jointly well over a million miles, a distance 
equivalent to the circumnavigation of the globe over forty 
times, and their journeyings have always been through mined 
seas, subject to attack by submarines. 

As I sit here in cozy London chambers writing before a 
cheery sea-coal fire and think of my late messmates out upon 



SIMS'S CIRCUS 99 

those dangerous waters the thing which stands out most 
clearly in my remembrance is their loyalty to each other, the 
friendly spirit of the fine, clean sailor lads, the mutual respect 
for each other of officers and crews, the unswerving belief of 
both in their ships and commanders; finally, the faith and 
complete devotion of every man in the fleet to Sims, their 
Admiral. 

I shall not soon forget my last view of the fleet. Looking 
down from a high hill behind the town, I could see the de- 
stroyers that had cruised with us lying like tired dogs on the 
harbor's bosom. Far out on the heads signal fights began to 
wink and blink — no doubt the tale of a submarine. From 
the heights to my left the Admiralty station answered. Then, 
very slowly, a destroyer opened one eye and blinked a re- 
sponse. Shortly thereafter three slim, dark shapes slid down 
stream and headed to sea. 

I was for home, but Sims's captains were again out on the 
job. 



THE PROMISE 1 

Frederic Boutet 

[Frederic Boutet is one of the chief French writers of short stories 
who have come into prominence since the beginning of the World 
War. His especial field is the people who stay behind and do not go to 
the front, as is shown by the title of one of his volumes of war stories, 
" Those Who Wait for Them." The story below first appeared in the 
pages of the New York Tribune, and is an admirable example of the 
simplicity and delicacy of the best French short stories.] 

The afternoon was wearing on. The threat of a coming 
storm had deepened the shade of the forest as the soldier 
who was following the wooded path debouched into a large 
clearing. He recognized this at once, remembering the de- 
scription of it which had been given to him, and he also 
recognized by its ivy-covered roof the house which he was 
seeking. In haste he crossed the clearing and, as the first 
drops of rain imprinted themselves in the dust of the path, 
he knocked at the door, which was promptly opened. 

"M. Maray?" he asked. 

"Papa is not here; he has gone to town," answered a fresh 
voice. "But if you wish to see his assistant, he lives only a 
little distance away." 

A young girl had appeared on the doorstep, followed by a 
huge dog, who growled and whom she told to keep quiet. 
She seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen years old. In 
her gray cloth dress she looked tall and well developed. Her 
clear face showed lines that were still childish ; but her eyes 
were serious, calm, serene. With her hand she brushed from 
her brow some unruly strands of chestnut hair. 

1 From "Tales of Wartime France," translated by William J. McPherson. 
Copyright, 191 8, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission. 



THE PROMISE 101 

"I wanted to speak first to M. Maray," the soldier stam- 
mered. 

On seeing her he had recoiled involuntarily, and she now 
gazed at him with astonishment, for he was obviously and 
painfully embarrassed, and that didn't go well with his great 
height, his vigorous features, and his frank and open expression. 

"If I could come back again," he murmured. "But that 
is impossible. I must take my train this evening. And after 
all it is you — you are the one with whom I must speak." 

The young girl had scarcely caught those last words, so 
violent was the beating of the rain. She asked him to enter 
the house, and closed the door after him. They both remained 
standing in a large, dimly lighted room. 

"I see that you do not know," he began, feeling his way. 
"I thought that you might already have had some news. I 
wanted to break it first to your father. But I am obliged to 
return at once, and I must keep the promise which I gave. 
I came from the front, you know. My name is Jean Vautier, 
and I was the comrade of one whom you know well. Yes — 
Paul Tullier. He is wounded — gravely, very gravely — " 

"Mon Dieu!" she cried. "He is not — Tell me the 
truth!" 

He made no answer, realizing that she understood. He 
was grieved and annoyed that he should have told his tragic 
news so abruptly, when he had intended to lead up to it 
more circumspectly. Venturing to look at the young girl, he 
saw that she had turned pale and that her cheeks were wet 
with tears. But he had a feeling of surprise. There was no 
trace there of that terrible despair which he had feared to 
see. He began again, in a low voice : 

"I promised him to bring here, if anything should happen 
to him, some of his effects — as souvenirs. Here they are." 

On the table between them he placed a little package, tied 
with a black ribbon. 

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Poor Louise! What a misfor- 
tune !" murmured the young girl. 



102 THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORLD WAR 

''Louise? You are not Louise? You are not Paul's 
fiancee ?" 

"No, no," she answered, shuddering in confusion and an- 
guish. "Louise is my sister. She is twenty years old. They 
were engaged before the war. I was only fourteen then. Poor 
Louise ! She loved him so much ! These last days she has 
been very uneasy. She had received no letter for a long time. 
She went to town with papa to try to get some news." 

"You are Emilie?" said the soldier. "He talked to me 
about you — but as if you were a child." 

"Yes, I am Emilie," she replied. 

After a moment of silence he began again, motioning to the 
package : 

"That is for your sister. He said that I must bring it here 
if anything happened to him. He fell beside me, killed on the 
spot. As soon as I was able to do so I kept my promise. He 
was my best comrade, Tullier ; for months we were together. 
When he made me swear to come here, he offered to do the 
same thing for me, if I should fall. Only, in my case, it was 
not worth while." 

"Why?" asked Emilie, raising her eyes. 

"Why?" he returned, with a forced smile. "Because I am 
alone in the world — absolutely alone. I have neither parents, 
nor relatives, nor fiancee — nobody who cares for me. In 
short, I am without any personal attachments. And even 
down there, you know, there are moments when it is hard to 
have to say that. But I am talking about things which do 
not interest you." 

She said softly that they did interest her. Then the soldier, 
after a little hesitation, ventured another question. 

"Have you a fiance down there?" 

She shook her head and her face reddened. They stood 
there silent, both under the spell of a vague feeling of tender- 
ness, with which was mingled the sadness of mourning, evoked 
by the poor souvenirs which lay on the table between them. 
The soldier thought confusedly of the death which he had so 



THE PROMISE 103 

narrowly escaped, and he had an imperious desire to live and 
to love, the image in which that desire flowered being that 
of a budding young girl with chestnut hair. But he did not 
dare to put his thoughts into words. He merely said : 

"I must go. But I should like to ask a favor of you before 
I go. Will you allow me to tell a comrade, if anything happens 
to me, to send you some things which I shall leave behind? 
That will not displease you?" 

She looked at him, her gray eyes filled with pity and emo- 
tion, and, trembling a little, answered : 

" You will come back — I am sure you will come back." 

Hesitating to read the true meaning of her look and tone, 
he said very softly : 

"I shall come back — here?" 

She nodded assent. He took her hand, bent across the table 
on which the little package lay and awkwardly kissed her on 
the forehead. Then he went away in the dusk, following the 
path through the woods, which smelt of verdure and freshly 
moistened earth. 



Ill 

THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 



THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH YOUTH 1 

Maurice Barres 

[Auguste Maurice Barres (1862- ) was born in Lorraine and was 
educated at the Lycee at Nancy. Since 1883, when he went to Paris and 
entered literary and political life, he has devoted himself to efforts to 
arouse the French people to patriotic and nationalistic feeling. In 1906 
he was made a member of the French Academy. The present article is 
only part of' an address delivered in London at the Hall of the Royal 
Society under the auspices of the British Academy on July 12, 19 16. 
Like most of M. Barres' writings since the beginning of the World War 
it is filled with letters from young French soldiers who have fallen in 
battle. For their unrestrained revelation of love of country and heroic 
self-confidence to a degree almost impossible for Americans these letters 
are invaluable.] 

Every year at Saint- Cyr the Fete du Triomphe is celebrated 
with great pomp. Upon this occasion is performed a tradi- 
tional ceremony in which the young men who have just finished 
their two years' course at the school proceed to christen the 
class following it and bestow a name upon their juniors. 

In July, 1 9 14, this ceremony came just at the time of the 
events which in their hasty course brought on the war, and 
for that reason was to assume a more than usually serious 
character. 

On the thirty-first of the month the general in command 
at the school made known to the Montmirails (the name of 
the graduating class), that they would have to christen their 
juniors that same evening, and only according to military 
regulations, without the accustomed festivities. 

All understood that perhaps during the night they would 
have to join their respective regiments. 

1 From "The Undying Spirit of France," translated by Margaret W. B. 
Corwin. Copyright, 191 7, by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission. 

107 



io8 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

Listen to the words of a young poet of the Montmirail 
class, Jean Allard-Meeus, as he tells his mother of the events 
of this evening, already become legendary among his com- 
patriots : 

After dinner the Assumption of Arms {prise d'armes) before the 
captain and the lieutenant on guard duty, the only officers entitled 
to witness this sacred rite. A lovely evening ; the air is filled with 
almost oppressive fragrance; the most perfect order prevails 
amidst unbroken silence. The Montmirails are drawn up, officers 
with swords, " men " with guns. The two classes take their places 
on the parade ground under command of the major of the higher 
class. Excellent patriotic addresses ; then, in the midst of growing 
emotion, I recited 

'TO-MORROW 

Soldiers of our illustrious race, 

Sleep, for your memories are sublime. 

Old time erases not the trace 

Of famous names graved on the tomb. 

Sleep ; beyond the frontier line 
Ye soon will sleep, once more at home. 

Never again, dearest mother, shall I repeat those lines, for never 
again shall I be on the eve of departure for out there, amongst a 
thousand young men trembling with feverish excitement, pride 
and hatred. Through my own emotion I must have touched upon 
a responsive chord, for I ended my verses amidst a general thrill. 
Oh, why did not the clarion sound the Call to Arms at their close ! 
We should all have carried its echoes with us as far as the Rhine. 

It was surrounded by this atmosphere of enthusiasm that 
the young officers received the title of Croix du Drapeau for 
their class upon their promotion, and it was at this juncture 
that one of the Montmirails, Gaston Voizard, cried out : "Let 
us swear to go into battle in full dress uniform, with white 
gloves and the plume (casoar) in our hats." 

"We swear it," made answer the five hundred of the Mont- 
mirail. 



THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH YOUTH 109 

"We swear it," echoed the voices of the five hundred of the 
Croix du Drapeau. 

A terrible scene and far too characteristically French, 
permeated by the admirable innocence and readiness to serve 
of these young men, and permeated, likewise, with disastrous 
consequences. 

They kept their rash vow. It is not permissible for me to 
tell you the proportion of those who thus met death. These 
attractive boys of whom I have been telling you are no more. 
How have they fallen? 

There were not witnesses in all cases, but they all met 
death in the same way as did Lieutenant de Fayolle. 

On the twenty-second of August Alain de Fayolle of the 
Croix du Drapeau was at Charleroi leading a section. His 
men hesitate. The young sub-lieutenant has put on his 
white gloves but discovers that he has forgotten his plume. 
He draws from his saddle-bag the red and white plume and 
fastens it to his shako. 

"You will get killed, my lieutenant," protested a corporal. 

"Forward !" shouts the young officer. 

His men follow him, electrified. A few moments later a 
bullet strikes him in the middle of his forehead, just below 
the plume. 

On the same day, August 22, 19 14, fell Jean Allard-Meeus, 
the poet of the Montmirail, struck by two bullets. 

Gaston Voizard, the youth who suggested the vow, outlived 
them by only a few months. He seems to offer apologies for 
this in the charming and heart-breaking letter which follows. 

December 25, 1914. 

It is midnight, Mademoiselle and good friend, and in order to 
write to you I have just removed my white gloves. (This is not a 
bid for admiration. The act has nothing of the heroic about it ; 
my last colored pair adorn the hands of a poor foot-soldier — piou- 
piou — who was cold.) 

I am unable to find words to express the pleasure and emotion 
caused me by your letter which arrived on the evening following a 



no THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

terrific bombardment of the poor little village which we are holding. 
The letter was accepted among us as balm for all possible racking 
of nerves and other curses. That letter, which was read in the 
evening to the officers of my battalion, — I ask pardon for any 
offense to your modesty, — comforted the most cast down after 
the hard day and gave proof to all that the heart of the young girls 
of France is nothing short of magnificent in its beneficence. 

It is, as I have said, midnight. To the honor and good fortune 
which have come to me of commanding my company during the 
last week (our captain having been wounded), I owe the pleasure 
of writing you at this hour from the trenches, where, by prodigies 
of cunning, I have succeeded in lighting a candle without attracting 
the attention of the gentlemen facing us, who are, by the way, not 
more than a hundred meters distant. 

My men, under their breath, have struck up the traditional 
Christmas hymn, "He is born, the Child Divine." The sky 
glitters with stars. One feels like making merry over all this, and, 
behold, one is on the brink of tears. I think of Christmases of other 
years spent with my family ; I think of the tremendous effort still 
to be made, of the small chance I have for coming out of this alive ; 
I think, in short, that perhaps this minute I am living my last 
Christmas. 

Regret, do you say ? . . . No, not even sadness. Only a tinge 
of gloom at not being among all those I love. 

All the sorrow of my thoughts is given to those best of friends 
fallen on the field of honor, whose loyal affection had made them 
almost my brothers ; — Allard, Fayolle, so many dear friends whom 
I shall never see again ! When on the evening of July 31, in my 
capacity of Pere Systbme of the Class of 1914 (promotion), I had 
pronounced amidst a holy hush the famous vow to make ourselves 
conspicuous by facing death wearing white gloves, our good-hearted 
Fayolle, who was, I may say, the most of an enthusiast of all the 
friends I have ever known, said to me with a grin : "What a stun- 
ning impression we shall make upon the Boches ! They will be so 
astounded that they will forget to fire." But, alas, poor Fayolle 
has paid dearly his debt to his country for the title of Saint-Cyrien ! 
And they are all falling around me, seeming to ask when the turn 
of their Pere Systeme is to come, so that Montmirail on entering 
Heaven may receive God's blessing with full ranks. 



THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH YOUTH in 

But a truce to useless repinings ! Let us give thought only to 
our dear France, our indispensable, imperishable, ever-living 
country ! And, by this beauteous Christmas night, let us put our 
faith more firmly than ever in victory. 

I must ask you, Mademoiselle and good friend, to excuse this 
awful scrawl. Will you also allow me to hope for a reply in the 
near future and will you permit this young French officer very re- 
spectfully to kiss the hand of a great-souled and generous-hearted 
maiden of France ? 

On the eighth of April, 191 5, came his turn to fall. 

Roland, on the evening after Roncevaux, murmurs with 
dying breath: "O Land of France, most sweet art thou, 
my country." It is with similar expressions and the same 
love that our soldiers of to-day are dying. " Au revoir" writes 
Jean Cherlomey to his wife, "promise me to bear no grudge 
against France if she requires all of me." — " Au revoir, it is 
for the sake of France," were the dying words of Captain 
Hersart de La Villemarque. — " Vive la France, I am well 
content, I am dying for her sake," said Corporal Voituret of 
the Second Dragoons, and expired while trying to sing the 
Marseillaise. — Albert Malet, whose handbooks are used in 
teaching history to our school children, enlisted for the war ; 
his chest is pierced by a bullet, he shouts: "Forward, my 
friends ! I am happy in dying for France," and sinks upon 
the barbed wire in front of the enemy's trenches. — " Vive 
la France, I die, but I am well content," cry in turn, one after 
another, thousands of dying men, and the soldier Raissac 
of the Thirty-first of the line, mortally wounded on the twenty- 
third of September, 1914, finds strength before expiring to 
write on the back of his mother's photograph : " It is an honor 
for the French soldier to die." 

They do not wish to be mourned. Georges Morillot, a 
graduate of the Ecole Normale and sub-lieutenant in the 
Twenty-seventh Infantry, died for France in the forest of Apre- 
mont on December n, 1914, leaving a letter to his parents: 



ii2 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

If this letter comes into your hands it will be because I am no 
more and because I shall have died the most glorious of deaths. 
Do not bewail me too much ; my end is of all the most to be desired. 
. . . Speak of me from time to time as of one of those who have 
given their blood that France may live, and who have died gladly. 
. . . Since my earliest childhood I have always dreamed of dying 
for my country, my face toward the foe. . . . Let me sleep where 
the accident of battle shall have placed me, by the side of those who, 
like myself, shall have died for France ; I shall sleep well there. . . . 
My dear Father and Mother, happy are they who die for their 
native land. What matters the life of individuals if France is 
saved ? My dearly-beloved, do not grieve. . . . Vive la France I 

Louis B danger, twenty years of age, killed by the enemy 
on September 28, 191 5, had written to his family: 

I hope that my death will not be to you a cause of sorrow, but 
an occasion for pride. It is my wish that mourning should not be 
worn for me, for, in the glorious day when France shall be restored, 
the somber garb must not be allowed to dull the sunlight with which 
all French souls will be irradiated. 

In obedience to his desire the cards announcing his death 
were not framed in black, but edged with silver. Hubert 
Prouve-Drouot was a Saint-Cyrien of the class called La 
Grande Revanche, who died on the field of honor ; when 
leaving home to join his regiment, he makes this his last 
request to his mother : "When the troops come home victori- 
ous through the Arc de Triomphe, if I am no longer amongst 
them, put on your finest apparel and be there." 

The fact is that the French mothers, sustained by a power 
above, believe that their sons, in yielding their lives for 
France, find, not death, but an evolution. One of them, who 
is unwilling that her name should be given, uses this word in 
a letter radiant with sacred beauty. 

Paris, October 20, 191 5. 
Commandant, 

I cannot thank you adequately for the accuracy of your sorrow- 
ful recollections. The anniversary of the sacrifice of my brave boy 



THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH YOUTH 113 

is at the same time particularly cruel and particularly sweet; 
cruel, because it recalls to mind a day when I was thinking of him, 
without misgivings as to the anguish which his valor was to cost 
me; sweet, because I could not visualize the abrupt end of this 
pure and brief life under any other aspect than that of a supreme 
evolution. 

I thank you, Commandant, for all that you tell me of my dear 
young soldier; may his glorious death contribute to the victory 
of our country ; when that time comes I shall kneel and once more 
say "I thank you." My mother's heart remains shattered in face of 
the death of this boy of twenty years who was all my joy. Oh, how 
proud and how unhappy one can be at the same time ! 

Will you, Commandant, allow me to transmit through you my 
tender feeling toward all those who cherish a remembrance of him 
who has fallen in his country's defense, and say to them that my 
thoughts turn frequently to that Land of Lorraine, so dear to all 
French hearts? 

" A supreme evolution," she says. It would seem, indeed, 
that we have known only the chrysalis form and that an entire 
people is unfolding its wings. The ever-living France is free- 
ing herself. It is for her that the sons of France are dying a 
death devoutly accepted by their mothers. 



DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN 1 

John Galsworthy 

[John Galsworthy (1867- ) lives in Devonshire, England, and is 
one of the best-known contemporary novelists and dramatists. His 
chief novels are "The Man of Property" (1906) and "The Freelands" 
(1915); his best-known play "Justice" (1910). This skillful analysis 
originally appeared in the Amster -darner Revue; it was reprinted later in 
the Fortnightly Review for May, 191 5. Its stern vigor well reflects the 
strength of feeling in regard to the World War on the part of even the 
most cultivated and fastidious Englishmen.] 



In attempting to understand the real nature of the English- 
man, certain salient facts must be borne in mind. 

The Sea. To be surrounded generation after generation 
by the sea has developed in him a suppressed idealism, a 
peculiar impermeability, a turn for adventure, a faculty for 
wandering, and for being sufficient unto himself, in far sur- 
roundings. 

The Climate. Whoso weathers for centuries a climate 
that, though healthy and never extreme, is, perhaps, the 
least reliable and one of the wettest in the world, must needs 
grow in himself a counterbalance of dry philosophy, a defiant 
humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The Eng- 
lishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; 
against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated 
with a sort of bluntness. 

The Political Age of His Country. This is by far the 
oldest settled Western Power, politically speaking. For eight 
hundred and fifty years England has known no serious mili- 
tary disturbance from without; for over one hundred and 

1 From "A Sheaf." Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Reprinted 
by permission. 

114 



DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN 115 

fifty she has known no military disturbance and no serious 
political turmoil within. This is partly the outcome of her 
isolation, partly the happy accident of her political constitu- 
tion, partly the result of the Englishman's habit of looking 
before he leaps, which comes, no doubt, from the mixture in 
his blood and the mixture in his climate. 

The Great Preponderance for Several Generations 
of Town over Country Life. Taken in conjunction with 
centuries of political stability, this is the main cause of a 
certain deeply engrained humaneness, of which, speaking 
generally, the Englishman appears to be rather ashamed than 
otherwise. 

The Public Schools. This potent element in the forma- 
tion of the modern Englishman, not only of the upper, but of 
all classes, is something that one rather despairs of making 
understood — in countries that have no similar institution. 
But : Imagine one hundred thousand youths of the wealthiest, 
healthiest, and most influential classes, passed, during each 
generation, at the most impressionable age, into a sort of 
ethical mold, emerging therefrom stamped to the core with 
the impress of a uniform morality, uniform manners, uniform 
way of looking at life ; remembering always that these youths 
fill seven eighths of the important positions in the professional 
administration of their country and the conduct of its com- 
mercial enterprise ; remembering, too, that through perpetual 
contact with every other class, their standard of morality and 
way of looking at life filters down into the very toes of the 
land. This great character-forming machine is remarkable 
for an unself-consciousness which gives it enormous strength 
and elasticity. Not inspired by the State, it inspires the State. 
The characteristics of the philosophy it enjoins are mainly 
negative, and, for that, the stronger. "Never show your 
feelings — to do so is not manly, and bores your fellows. 
Don't cry out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance 
to other people. Tell no tales about your companions, and 
no lies about yourself. Avoid all 'swank/ 'side,' 'swagger/ 



n6 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at." 
(This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, 
except in his Press, habitually understates everything.) 
" Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play games 
hard, and keep the rules of them, even when your blood is 
hot and you are tempted to disregard them. In three words : 
Play the Game" — a little phrase which may be taken as 
the characteristic understatement of the modern English- 
man's creed of honor, in all classes. This great, unconscious 
machine has considerable defects. It tends to the formation 
of "caste"; it is a poor teacher of sheer learning; and, 
aesthetically, with its universal suppression of all interesting 
and queer individual traits of personality — it is almost 
horrid. But it imparts a remarkable incorruptibility to Eng- 
lish life; it conserves vitality, by suppressing all extremes; 
and it implants everywhere a kind of unassuming stoicism 
and respect for the rules of the great game — Life. Through 
its unconscious example, and through its cult of games, it has 
vastly influenced even the classes not directly under its control. 
The Englishman must have a thing brought under his nose 
before he will act ; bring it there and he will go on acting after 
everybody else has stopped. He lives very much in the 
moment because he is essentially a man of facts and not a 
man of imagination. Want of imagination makes him, philo- 
sophically speaking, rather ludicrous; in practical affairs 
it handicaps him at the start; but once he has "got going" 
— ■ as we say — ■ it is of incalculable assistance to his stamina. 
The Englishman, partly through this lack of imagination 
and nervous sensibility, partly through his inbred dislike 
of extremes, and habit of minimizing the expression of every- 
thing, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. 
It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this 
unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent 
spirit of competition — not to say pugnacity — so strong 
that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and 
let live," half-surly, half -good-humored manner; add a 



DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN 117 

peculiar, ironic, " don't care" sort of humor; an under- 
ground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism 
— and you get some notion of the pudding of English char- 
acter. Its main feature is a kind of terrible coolness, a rather 
awful level-headedness. The Englishman makes constant 
small blunders; but few, almost no, deep mistakes. He is 
a slow starter, but there is no stronger finisher, because he 
has by temperament and training the faculty of getting through 
any job that he gives his mind to with a minimum expenditure 
of vital energy ; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread- 
eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the 
practical heart of the matter as possible. He is — to the eye 
of an artist — distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark 
for satire. And yet he is in truth an idealist; though it is 
his nature to snub, disguise, and mock his own inherent opti- 
mism. To admit enthusiasms is "bad form" if he is a " gentle- 
man"; and " swank," or mere waste of good heat, if he is 
not a " gentleman." England produces more than its proper 
percentage of cranks and poets; it may be taken that this is 
Nature's way of redressing the balance in a country where 
feelings are not shown, sentiments not expressed, and extremes 
laughed at. Not that the Englishman lacks heart ; he is not 
cold, as is generally supposed — on the contrary, he is warm- 
hearted and feels very strongly; but just as peasants, for 
lack of words to express their feelings, become stolid, so it 
is with the Englishman, from sheer lack of the habit of self- 
expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; 
but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express 
his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. 
He is inarticulate ; has not the- clear and fluent cynicism of 
expansive natures, wherewith to confess exactly how he 
stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have 
things both ways ; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable 
to express himself even to himself, that he has never realized 
this truth, much less confessed it — hence his appearance 
of hypocrisy. 



n8 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

He is quite wrongly credited with being attached to money. 
His island position, his early discoveries of coal, iron, and pro- 
cesses of manufacture, have made him, of course, into a con- 
firmed industrialist and trader ; but he is more of an adven- 
turer in wealth than a heaper-up of it. He is far from sitting 
on his money-bags — has absolutely no vein of proper avarice; 
and for national ends will spill out his money like water, when 
he is convinced of the necessity. 

In everything it comes to that with the Englishman — he 
must be convinced ; and he takes a lot of convincing. He 
absorbs ideas slowly, reluctantly, he would rather not imagine 
anything unless he is obliged ; but in proportion to the slow- 
ness with which he can be moved is the slowness with which 
he can be removed ! Hence the symbol of the bulldog. When 
he does see and seize a thing, he seizes it with the whole of 
his weight, and wastes no breath in telling you that he has 
got hold. That is why his Press is so untypical; it gives the 
impression that he does waste breath. And, while he has 
hold he gets in more mischief in a shorter time than any other 
dog, because of his capacity for concentrating on the present, 
without speculating on the past or future. 

For the particular situation which the Englishman has now 
to face, he is terribly well adapted. Because he has so little 
imagination, so little power of expression, he is saving nerve 
all the time. Because he never goes to extremes, he is saving 
energy of body and spirit. That the men of all nations are 
about equally endowed with courage and self-sacrifice has 
been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities 
that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. 
The Englishman does not -look into himself ; he does not 
brood ; he sees no further forward than is necessary ; and he 
must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advan- 
tages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various com- 
batants, and you will see how far less imaginative and reflect- 
ing (though shrewd, practical, and humorous) the English 
are than any others ; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly 



DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN 119 

conviction that behind them is a fiber like rubber, that may 
be frayed and bent a little this way and that, but can neither 
be permeated nor broken. 

When this war began, the Englishman rubbed his eyes 
steeped in peace, he is still rubbing them just a little, but less 
and less every day. A profound lover of peace by habit and 
tradition, he has actually realized by now that he is in for it 
up to the neck. To any one who really knows him — c'est 
quelque chose! 

It shall freely be confessed that from an aesthetic point of 
view the Englishman, devoid of high lights and shadows, 
coated with drab, and superhumanly steady on his feet, is 
not too attractive. But for the wearing, tearing, slow, and 
dreadful business of this war, the Englishman — fighting of 
his own free will, unimaginative, humorous, competitive, 
practical, never in extremes, a dumb, inveterate optimist, 
and terribly tenacious — is equipped with Victory. 



PRO PATRIA 1 

Maurice Maeterlinck 

[Maurice Maeterlinck (1862- ) was born in Ghent, but in 1896 
settled in Paris as a man of letters. He has written many plays and poems, 
the best known of the former being "L'Oiseau Bleu" (1909). Among his 
other literary works are "La Vie des Abeilles" ("The Life of the Bees") 
and "Mon Chien" ("My Dog") published in 1906. In 1911 he was 
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his method he is a symbolist. 
The present address was delivered at the Scala Theater in Milan, Italy, 
on November 30, 1914, and not only presents the attitude of the Belgians 
toward the German invasion, but is a skillful plea for Italy to abandon 
her neutrality and enter the war on the side of the Allies.] 

I need not here recall the events that hurled Belgium into 
the depths of distress most glorious where she is struggling 
to-day. She has been punished as never nation was punished 
for doing her duty as never nation did before. She saved 
the world while knowing that she could not be saved. She 
saved it by flinging herself in the path of the oncoming bar- 
barians, by allowing herself to be trampled to death in order 
to give the defenders of justice time, not to rescue her, for 
she was well aware that rescue could not come in time, but 
to collect the forces needed to save our Latin civilization from 
the greatest danger that has ever threatened it. She has 
thus done this civilization, which is the only one whereunder 
the majority of men are willing or able to live, a service exactly 
similar to that which Greece, at the time of the great Asiatic 
invasions, rendered to the mother of this civilization. But, 
while the service is similar, the act surpasses all comparison. 

1 From "The Wrack of the Storm," translated by Alexander Teixeira de 
Mattos. Copyright, 1916, by Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc. Reprinted by 
permission. 

120 



PRO P ATRIA 121 

We may ransack history in vain for aught to approach it 
in grandeur. The magnificent sacrifice at Thermopylae, 
which is perhaps the noblest action in the annals of war, is 
illumined with an equally heroic but less ideal light, for it 
was less disinterested and more material. Leonidas and his 
three hundred Spartans were in fact defending their homes, 
their wives, their children, all the realities which they had left 
behind them. King Albert and his Belgians, on the other 
hand, knew full well that, in barring the invader's road, they 
were inevitably sacrificing their homes, their wives, and their 
children. Unlike the heroes of Sparta, instead of possessing 
an imperative and vital interest in fighting, they had every- 
thing to gain by not fighting and nothing to lose — save 
honor. In the one scale were fire and the sword, ruin, mas- 
sacre, the infinite disaster which we see; in the other was 
that little word honor, which also represents infinite things, 
but things which we do not see, or which we must be very 
pure and very great to see clearly. It has happened now and 
again in history that a man standing higher than his fellows 
perceives what this word represents and sacrifices his life 
and the life of those whom he loves to what he perceives; 
and we have not without reason devoted to such men a sort 
of cult that places them almost on a level with the gods. 
But what had never yet happened — ■ and I say this without 
fear of contradiction from whosoever cares to search the 
memory of man — is that a whole people, great and small, 
rich and poor, learned and ignorant, deliberately immolated 
itself thus for the sake of an unseen thing. 

And observe that we are not discussing one of those heroic 
resolutions which are taken in a moment of enthusiasm, when 
man easily surpasses himself, and which have not to be main- 
tained when, forgetting his intoxication, he lapses on the 
morrow to the dead level of his everyday life. We are con- 
cerned with a resolution that has had to be taken and main- 
tained every morning, for now nearly four months, in the 
midst of daily increasing distress and disaster. And not only 



122 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

has this resolution not wavered by a hair's breadth, but it 
grows as steadily as the national misfortune; and to-day, 
when this misfortune is reaching its full, the national reso- 
lution is likewise attaining its zenith. I have seen many of 
my refugee fellow countrymen : some used to be rich and had 
lost their all; others were poor before the war and now no 
longer owned even what the poorest own. I have received 
many letters from every part of Europe where duty's exiles 
had sought a brief instant of repose. In them there was lamen- 
tation, as was only too natural, but not a reproach, not a 
regret, not a word of recrimination. I did not once come upon 
that hopeless but excusable cry which, one would think, might 
so easily have sprung from despairing lips : 

"If our king had not done what he did, we should not be 
suffering what we are suffering to-day." 

The idea does not even occur to them. It is as though this 
thought were not of those which can live in that atmosphere 
purified by misfortune. They are not resigned, for to be re- 
signed means to renounce the strife, no longer to keep up one's 
courage. They are proud and happy in their distress. They 
have a vague feeling that this distress will regenerate them 
after the manner of a baptism of faith and glory and ennoble 
them for all time in the remembrance of men. An unex- 
pected breath, coming from the secret reserves of the human 
race and from the summits of the human heart, has suddenly 
passed over their lives and given them a single soul, formed 
of the same heroic substance as that of their great king. 

They have done what had never before been done; and 
it is to be hoped for the happiness of mankind that no nation 
will ever again be called upon for a like sacrifice. But this 
wonderful example will not be lost, even though there be 
no longer any occasion to imitate it. At a time when the uni- 
versal conscience seemed about to bend under the weight of 
long prosperity and selfish materialism, suddenly it raised 
by several degrees the political morality of the world and 
lifted it all at once to a height which it had not yet reached 



PRO PATRIA 123 

and from which it will never again be able to descend, for 
there are actions so glorious, actions which fill so great a place 
in our memory, that they found a sort of new religion and 
definitely fix the limits of the human conscience and of human 
loyalty and courage. 

They have really, as I have already said and as history will 
one day establish with greater eloquence and authority than 
mine, they have really saved Latin civilization. They had 
stood for centuries at the junction of two powerful and hos- 
tile forms of culture. They had to choose and they did not 
hesitate. Their choice was all the more significant, all the 
more instructive, inasmuch as none was so well qualified 
as they to choose with a full knowledge of what they were 
doing. You are all aware that more than half of Belgium is 
of Teutonic stock. She was therefore, thanks to her racial 
affinities, better able than any other to understand the cul- 
ture that was being offered her, together with the imputation 
of dishonor which it included. She understood it so well that 
she rejected it with an outbreak of horror and disgust unpar- 
alleled in violence, spontaneous, unanimous, and irresistible, 
thus pronouncing a verdict from which there was no appeal 
and giving the world a peremptory lesson sealed with every 
drop of her blood. 

But to-day she is at the end of her resources. She has ex- 
hausted not her courage but her strength. She has paid with 
all that she possesses for the immense service which she has 
rendered to mankind. Thousands and thousands of her chil- 
dred are dead ; all her riches have perished ; almost all her 
historic memories, which were her pride and her delight, 
almost all her artistic treasures, which were numbered among 
the fairest in this world, are destroyed forever. She is nothing 
more than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, 
four great towns alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, 
for whom the epithet of barbarians is in point of fact too 
honorable, appear to have spared only so that they may 
keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the day of the 



124 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, 
and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the 
admirable Grand'place, the Hotel de Ville, and the Cathedral 
at Brussels are, I know, undermined: I repeat, I know it 
from private and trustworthy testimony against which no 
denial can prevail. A spark will be enough to turn one of the 
recognized marvels of Europe into a heap of ruins like those 
of Ypres, Malines, and Louvain. Soon after — for, short of 
immediate intervention, the disaster is as certain as though 
it were already accomplished — Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent 
will suffer the same fate ; and in a moment, as I was saying 
the other day, there will vanish from sight one of the corners 
of this earth in which the greatest store of memories, of his- 
toric matter and artistic beauties had been accumulated. 

The time has come to end this foolery ! The time has come 
for everything that draws breath to rise up against these 
systematic, insane, and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated 
without any military excuse or strategic object. The reason 
why we are at last uttering a great cry of distress, we who 
are above all a silent people, the reason why we turn to your 
mighty and noble country is that Italy is to-day the only Euro- 
pean power that is still in a position to stop the unchained 
brute on the brink of his crime. You are ready. You have 
but to stretch out a hand to save us. We have not come to beg 
for our lives : these no longer count with us and we have al- 
ready offered them up. But, in the name of the last beautiful 
things that the barbarians have left us, we come with our 
prayers to the land of beautiful things. It must not be, it 
shall not be, that on the day when at last we return, not to 
our homes, for most of these are destroyed, but to our native 
soil, that soil is so laid waste as to become an unrecognizable 
desert. You know better than any others what memories 
mean, what masterpieces mean to a nation, for your country 
is covered with memories and masterpieces. It is also the 
land of justice and the cradle of the law, which is simply 
justice that has taken cognizance of itself. On this account, 



PRO PATRIA 125 

Italy owes us justice. And she owes it to herself to put a stop 
to the greatest iniquity in the annals of history, for not to 
put a stop to it when one has the power is almost tantamount 
to taking part in it. It is for Italy as much as for France that 
we have suffered. She is the source, she is the very mother 
of the ideal for which we have fought and for which the last 
of our soldiers are still fighting in the last of our trenches. 



THE SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE 1 
Gabriele d'Annunzio 

[Gabriele d'Annunzio (1864- ) is perhaps the most prominent 
Italian novelist and poet of the present day. His first poetical work was 
published in 1879 and his first novel in 1889. By 1895 he had achieved 
an international reputation. By many Italians he is considered an ex- 
cellent poet, especially in his presentation of the beauty and romance of 
Italian life during the Renaissance period, but as the product of mate- 
rialistic influences of the present day which make him incapable of ap- 
preciating the social problems of Italy since it has achieved its national 
unity. He is, however, one of the principal voices in the demand that 
Italia Irredenta should be wrested from Austria and added to the Italian 
kingdom. He is now an aviator in the Italian Air Service. The sketch 
presented was originally published in the London Daily, Telegraph for 
September 14, 191 5, and presents in a striking fashion the feelings of 
many Italians toward the World War.] 

In belligerent Venice, that reenforces her airy arches, her 
delicate triforae, with rough walls of bricks, cement, and 
beams ; in the Venice that has transformed her hotels, for- 
merly sacred to leisure and love, into hospitals full of bleeding 
heroes ; in the dark and silent Venice, whose soul is in intense 
expectation of the roar of the far-away guns ; in courageous 
and determined Venice, which hourly waits the apparition 
in the sky, where there still linger Tiepolo's and Veronese's 
soft clouds, of winged death-bearing craft; in the Venice 
of the greater Italy, the Land of Abraham Lincoln has to-day 
an extraordinary representative and admirable witness, whose 
mission has assumed unexpected importance. 

This representative is an American woman, who has conse- 
crated herself to our Saint Francis of Assisi. I like to think 
of her as one of those saints who bear in the palm of their 

1 From the Current History Magazine, published by the New York Times 
Company, November, 19 15. Reprinted by permission. 

126 



THE SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE 127 

open hand either a tower or a church or a palace. She was 
sent to Venice many years ago to execute miniature plaster 
copies of the most artistic buildings. If the stupid Austrian 
ferocity should ruin one of St. Mark's domes, a wing of the 
Procuratie, a lodge of the Ducal Palace, a nave of SS. John 
and Paul's Church, the choir of the Frari, or the gentle miracle 
of the Ca' d' Or o, there will remain a souvenir of the beautiful 
things destroyed in the plaster models of the patient artifi- 
ceress. 

The Venetian knows her well under the name which I my- 
self bestowed on her years ago, the Franciscan sister of the 
Guidecca. The Ca' Frollo, where she resides, is a yellow struc- 
ture overlooking a large garden bordering on the Lagoon. 
A steep oak stairway leads up to the living room. Above 
the entrance there is an iron shield, with ornamental edges 
resembling a frying pan, which in ancient times was used to 
dish out polenta. It is Miss Clara's coat-of-arms. 

She comes and meets me smiling on the threshold. On her 
face a smile multiplies as a ray of sun on a rippled water sur- 
face. I have the immediate and strong impression of rinding 
myself before that strange phenomenon represented by a 
person truly full of life. She wears a bluish cassock, like an 
artificer. Her hair is white, of the brightest silver, raised on 
the forehead and thrown back. The eyes are sky blue, shin- 
ing, innocent, infantine, and in them the internal emotions 
ebb constantly like flowing water. She has the strong, rough 
hand of the working woman. 

Her attic is very large. The massive beams fastened with 
iron are as numerous as the trunks of a forest, moth-eaten, 
with all their fibers exposed, of a golden brown color. Along 
the wall plaster casts of architectonic details are disposed : 
capitals, arches, tailpieces, cornices, bas reliefs. There is a 
complete fireplace by Lombardo, the very fireplace of the 
Ducal Palace. There are Madonnas, busts and masks. Sus- 
pended on two ropes is a model of an ancient Venetian galley, 
a hull of which the lines are most beautiful. - 



128 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

"I rescued it at Chioggia with a few cents from a fisherman 
who was in the act of burning it to cook his polenta," Miss 
Clara told me. 

On one side the windows look out on the Guidecca Canal, 
which shows the Ducal Palace, the Piazzetta, the library, 
and the anchored ships, and on the other they look into the 
garden and the Lagoon. At intervals a rumbling is heard in 
the distance. Miss Clara sits by the window. 

"With the hands of a saint, with religious hands," I tell 
her, "you have copied the most beautiful churches and palaces 
of Venice. Now these beautiful things are threatened, are 
in danger. We expect to see them in ruin any day. There 
will at least live the copies that you have sent beyond the 
seas." 

Her blue eyes suddenly fill with tears, and the horror of 
war, the horror of blind destruction, draws all the lines of 
her face. 

"My God, my God! " she murmurs, joining her hands. 
" Will you allow such a crime?" 

"What does it matter," I venture to say, "if the old stones 
perish, so long as the soul of Italy is saved and renewed?" 

She stares at me intently with profound sadness, shaking 
her white head, over which there plays the purest light of 
sunset. 

"Have you seen the blinded Ducal Palace?" she asked me, 
meaning the lodges which the curators have had immured. 

We have before us the plaster model of the Palace, on which 
she has been working for several years. With infinite care 
she has modeled every arch, every column, every capital, 
every smallest detail. Her work is an enormous toy, built 
for an infant nation. She removes the roof and bends to look 
into it, resembling in the proportions the image of a gigantic 
saint in the act of guarding a refuge which she protects. No- 
body knows better than she the structure of the edifice which 
incloses the blackened paradise. In my presence she dis- 
mounts the copy piece by piece, organ by organ; almost, I 



THE SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE 129 

would say, limb by limb, even as an anatomist would do with 
the parts composing the human body in order to learn to 
know their number, their form, their location, and their rela- 
tion to each other. 

As the shadows begin to invade the attic, she lights an old 
brass lamp with four arms. The wicks crackle, diffusing a 
smell of olive oil, which mixes with that of the wax. In the 
attic the prints of the many matrices pile up, and it seems 
to be as if an impalpable sentiment of vigor rises from the 
concave matrices whence the copies of the beautiful things 
emerge. 

Miss Clara works there together with a few workmen, who 
also compose her simple family. She eats with them the 
polenta, at the same table. She takes me by the hand and 
leads me into her kitchen, where there is a single hearth, 
with a rack full of common but decorated dishes. Truly 
there breathes the spirit of St. Francis. She is a kind of nun 
in freedom who has passed from contemplation to action. 
Before all those beams I think of the worn-out, splintered 
wood of the Santa Chiara choir. Before the ears of corn 
which I see in a rustic vase my mind goes to the cluster of 
brown ears which I saw at the top of the reading desk in the 
choir of St. Bernardino of Siena. 

"I am very poor," she tells me. 

Whole treasures of goodness, indulgence, and love shine 
at the bottom of the flowing waters of her blue eyes. There 
is in the structure of her head something virile, and at the 
same time tender, something intrepid and meek. As the 
lines of her face seem rays, so her work, her solitude, her pov- 
erty are transfigured into divine happiness. 

"I am very poor," she says, and she shows me her naked 
hands, strong and pure, the only source of her daily wealth. 

I know she distributes all her earnings; I know that on 
more than one occasion she suffered hunger and cold. To-day 
she had not even a bag of plaster for her work. Sitting by 
the window, she talks to me of her perennial joy, of the joy 



130 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

of working from dawn to sunset. Slowly the garden grows 
dark in the dusk. Night begins to fall on the Venice that 
no longer lights her lamps, not even the lights before the 
virgins watching over the deserted canals. The nocturnal 
horror of war begins to expand on the Lagoon. In the dis- 
tance a rumbling is heard coming, perhaps from Aquilega 
or Grado where they are righting for redemption. The vast 
attic illuminated by the four-armed lamp becomes alive with 
shadows and quiverings. 

Sitting by the window, simple, candid, sweet, she searches 
my innermost soul, then she observes my hands, too white, 
and my nails, too polished, and, lo! poverty appears to me 
as the nakedness of force, as the sincerest and most noble 
statue of life. 

"I also work," I tell her, as if ashamed of hands too white 
and my nails too polished. Then I speak to her of my dis- 
cipline, of my nights spent at the desk, of my patient re- 
searches, of my constancy in remaining bent over my desk for 
fifteen, twenty hours at a stretch, of the enormous quantity 
of oil I consume in my lamp, of the pile of paper, bundles 
of pens, of the large inkstand, of all the tools of my trade. 
Then I show her a tangible proof; on my middle ringer, 
deformed by the constant use of the pen, a smooth furrow and 
a callosity. She is immediately touched. All her face expresses 
a maternal tenderness. She takes my ringer, examines the 
sign. Then suddenly, with a gesture of human grace which 
I shall never forget, she gently touches it with her lips. 

"God bless you," she says. 

The flowing water ebbs between her eyebrows^ glittering, 
rippling, ever new. 

"God keep you ever." 

My heart is full of tender gratitude. I am going to the war, 
and the blessing of this pure creature will bring me back. 
My hands shall become rough and dark. I shall work for 
the God of Italy, fight for the God of Italy. 

"God keep Italy ever," she adds. 



THE SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE 131 

In leaving I stroll by the plaster models of the churches, 
palaces, lodges, bell-towers. The American nun, holding 
my hand, escorts me to the threshold. As I descend the oak 
stairway she vanishes in the shadow. 

Night is already falling on Venice as an azure avalanche. 
As I raise my head to spy the appearance of the first star, I 
hear coming over from the deserted sky the rumbling of an 
aeroplane approaching from Malamocco. 

"May God keep the stones of Venice." 

And it seems to me that Miss Clara weeps, over there, in 
her attic amid the images of the beautiful things over which 
there hangs the threat of destruction. 



THE AMERICAN FLAG 1 
Rene Viviani 

[Rene Viviani (1863- ) , French premier at the opening of the World 
War, and one of the most brilliant leaders and orators of the Socialist 
party in France, was born in French North Africa. He has been in Par- 
liamentary life since 1893. This short oration was delivered in St. 
Louis, Missouri, in May, 191 7, during the visit to the United States of the 
French Mission, of which M. Viviani and Marshal Joffre were both mem- 
bers. In its simple and stirring phrasing of the emotions evoked by the 
occasion, the presentation of an American flag to a regiment, it is char- 
acteristic of French feeling toward American participation in the World 
War.] 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I wish my voice were powerful enough, and I wish my words 
could be expressed in your own language, so clear and ringing, 
so that they might reach across this hall and at the same time 
find a way to your hearts. But still, for only a few minutes, 
allow me to voice to-night, not only in my name, but in all 
my countrymen's name, to whom you have given such a 
hearty welcome, a welcome so worthy of France, the feelings 
of emotion and pride which are swelling up in our souls. 

We are happy to find ourselves in this great city of St. Louis. 
Amidst your welcome, we shall not forget that if to-day living 
men stand up to escort us, we also find here the shades of our 
ancestors, of the first Frenchmen who found themselves in 
this city. We are happy to meet here people of all races, 
merged into the very heart of the fatherland, merged into the 
life of this city, and we know that, whoever they may be, 

1 From "Balfour, Viviani and Joffre, Their Speeches and Other Public 
Utterances in America," edited by Francis W. Halsey. Copyright, 191 7, by 
Funk & Wagnalls Co. Reprinted by permission. 

132 



THE AMERICAN FLAG 133 

they remain unflinchingly faithful to their American father- 
land in this vast conflict, faithful to the country of which, 
first of all, they are sons. 

And I am also happy, for my part, to speak here under the 
auspices of Mr. Long, our friend, your representative, and 
the descendant of that illustrious family, one of whom has a 
statue on one of your squares. I am happy to greet the 
venerable and distinguished mother of the assistant secretary 
of the Department of State, who, ever since we landed on 
American soil, has stretched out to us brotherly hands, 
and in whose heart we feel the love he bears to France, our 
fatherland. 

Here, ladies and gentlemen, you have not lost the memory 
of the great historical event which took place here a few 
months ago. It is in this hall, where you now sit, that was 
held the Democratic convention, which designated as its 
presidential candidate your illustrious fellow countryman, 
President Wilson. At that time his own party and you, ladies, 
and you also, citizens, did not realize that war was so near at 
hand ; you were hoping you might long enjoy the blessings of 
peace, and at that very moment you were going through the 
same drama that we, the French people, went through three 
years ago. France, generous and pacific France, who had 
made supreme sacrifices for the peace of the world, who turned 
toward humanity with feelings of love, who had one thought 
only, to bring forth liberty for all nations — this very same 
France was attacked, and then she rose for the defense of 
her honor and of her independence. 

For nearly three years, with her faithful allies, but, at the 
start of the conflict, almost alone, she has been struggling 
breast against breast, hand against hand, weapon against 
weapon. For close upon three years, in the deep trenches, the 
sons of France held in check the enemies who were striving 
to invade her. For close upon three years immortal France, 
faithful at all times to herself, preserving her sacred image 
pure through all storms, the France of to-day, worthy of the 



134 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

France of the past, raises the flag which is torn by shot and 
shell, but which is yet held aloft by the valiant hand of her 
soldiers. 

And, a few minutes ago, in that touching ceremony, touch- 
ing as all those earnest and solemn ceremonies in which soldiers 
speak in plain and laconic language, but a language which 
comes from the depth of their hearts, when, in the name of 
the Fifth Regiment of St. Louis, one of your officers handed 
to Marshal Joffre the flag which he at once returned with a 
few earnest words, it seemed to me that I was witnessing a 
spectacle comparable to that which I witnessed on the soil 
of France. How often have we seen our generals hand over 
flags to our children? How often have we seen our children 
leave for the hell of the fighting line, their heads erect, their 
hearts full of a virile joy, for they knew that they were de- 
fending their fatherland. All of them, they kept their eyes 
fixed on the flag, on the flag which is the symbol of liberty 
and justice. 

And, just as we were able to preserve the flag from any 
stain, just as our children would rather die where they stood 
than permit that sacred flag to fall to the ground, just as we 
realized that it was the soul of the fatherland that was being 
carried forward in the folds of the tricolor flag, in the same 
way — because all people are one in that — it is the soul of 
the American fatherland which shines radiant through the 
stars of the American flag, and Mr. Mayor was right when he 
said that already it is bringing us the promise of final victory. 
To-morrow that flag will be waved on the battle fields. 

To-morrow it also will know the glory of conflict. Oh, it 
was never meant to sleep in peace in a hall, to be placed over 
a monument and to feel only the gentle breath of a pacific 
mind. Because it was the symbol of a free fatherland, it was 
meant to face the risks of the battle fields, and to return in 
glory, so that you may keep it in a temple high enough 
and sacred enough to pay back the homage which is due 
to it. 



THE AMERICAN FLAG 135 

Au revoir, then, soldiers of the Fifth Regiment, sons of the 
American fatherland, you who to-morrow, clothed in warlike 
uniform, will bring on the battle field all the courage which 
you have shown for 140 years. Au revoir, soldiers of the 
American fatherland. Perhaps you will meet over there, 
across the Atlantic Ocean, the sons of the French fatherland, 
the sons of the Allies. All together you will march to the fight. 
And why will you march to the fight? Is it in order to rend 
others, is it to conquer territory, is it to wrench away robber 
hands, a province or a city? No, no. It is not thus we wage 
war; we wage war for justice, for universal democracy, for 
right, that autocracy may perish, that at last free men may 
draw free breath in the full enjoyment of peace and in the 
pursuit of their labors. 



AMERICA OFFERS HER TROOPS 

John J. Pershing 

[General John Joseph Pershing (i860- ) was educated at West 
Point and has spent his life as an officer in the United States Army. He 
served in various Indian campaigns, in the Spanish-American War, and 
during the insurrection in the Philippines. In 19 16 he commanded the 
expedition into Mexico against Villa, and was sent to France as head of 
the American Expeditionary Force in May, 191 7. The following offer 
was made at the height of the German offensive which began in March, 
1918, and marked the fusion of all the Allied armies into one command 
under the Supreme War Council and General Foch.] 

Paris, March 30, 1918. — General Pershing visited General 
Foch, the new supreme commander of the allied forces, yester- 
day and placed all the men and resources of the United States 
at his disposal in the following words : 

I come to say to you that the American people would hold it a 
great honor for our troops were they engaged in the present battle. 
I ask it of you, in my name and in that of the American people. 

There is at this moment no other question than that of fighting. 
Infantry, artillery, aviation — all that we have are yours to dispose 
of them as you will. Others are coming which are as numerous 
as will be necessary. I have come to say to you that the American 
people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in 
history. 



136 



THE DECISION TO MAKE WAR 1 

Friedrich von Bernhardi 

[General Friedrich von Bernhardi began to publish military books in 
1889, when his "Cavalry in the Next War" appeared. In 1896 he pub- 
lished his most famous book, " Germany and the Next War," which went 
through several editions in the original and was translated into English 
in 191 1, in which year it had been revised by the author. The ideas which 
Bernhardi presents are largely taken from Treitschke, but the vigor and 
frankness of the disciple is even greater than that of the master. The 
present selection is part of Chapter II, entitled "The Duty to Make War," 
and in the light of subsequent events in Germany when war was actually 
determined upon displays the mental processes of the ruling class and the 
military leaders.] 

Prince Bismarck repeatedly declared before the German 
Reichstag that no one should ever take upon himself the 
immense responsibility of intentionally bringing about a war. 
It could not, he said, be foreseen what unexpected events 
might occur, which altered the whole situation, and made a 
war, with its attendant dangers and horrors, superfluous. In 
his "Thoughts and Reminiscences" he expresses himself to 
this effect : "Even victorious wars can only be justified when 
they are forced upon a nation, and we cannot see the cards 
held by Providence so closely as to anticipate the historical 
development by personal calculation." 2 

We need not discuss whether Prince Bismarck wished this 
dictum to be regarded as a universally applicable principle, 
or whether he uttered it as a supplementary explanation of 
the peace policy which he carried out for so long. It is 

1 From " Germany and the Next War," translated by Allen H. Powles. 
Authorized American Edition. Copyright, Longmans, Green & Co. Reprinted 
by permission. 

2 "Gedanken und Erinnerungen," vol. ii., p. 93. [Author's note.] 

137' 



138 THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

difficult to gauge its true import. The notion of forcing a war 
upon a nation bears various interpretations. We must not 
think merely of external foes who compel us to fight. A war 
may seem to be forced upon a statesman by the state of 
home affairs, or by the pressure of the whole political situation. 

Prince Bismarck did not, however, always act according to 
the strict letter of that speech ; it is his special claim to great- 
ness that at the decisive moment he did not lack the boldness 
to begin a war on his own initiative. The thought which he 
expresses in his later utterances cannot, in my opinion, be 
shown to be a universally applicable principle of political 
conduct. If we wish to regard it as such, we shall not only 
run counter to the ideas of our greatest German Prince, but 
we exclude from politics that independence of action which 
is the true motive force. 

The greatness of true statesmanship consists in a knowledge 
of the natural trend of affairs, and in a just appreciation of the 
value of the controlling forces, which it uses and guides in its 
own interest. It does not shrink from the conflicts, which 
under the given conditions are unavoidable, but decides 
them resolutely by war when a favorable position affords 
prospect of a successful issue. In this way statescraft be- 
comes the tool of Providence, which employs the human will 
to attain its ends. "Men make history," 1 as Bismarck's 
actions clearly show. 



It may be, then, assumed as obvious that the great practical 
politician Bismarck did not wish that his words on the political 
application of war should be interpreted in the sense which 
has nowadays so frequently been attributed to them, in order 
to lend the authority of the great man to a weak cause. Only 
those conditions which can be ascertained and estimated 
should determine political action. 

1 Treitschke, "Deutsche Geschichte," i, p. 28. [Author's note.] 



THE DECISION TO MAKE WAR 139 

For the moral justification of the political decision we must 
not look to its possible consequences, but to its aim and its 
motives, to the conditions assumed by the agent, and to the 
trustworthiness, honor, and sincerity of the considerations 
which led to action. Its practical value is determined by an 
accurate grasp of the whole situation, by a correct estimate 
of the resources of the two parties, by a clear anticipation of 
the probable results — in short, by statesmanlike insight and 
promptness of decision. 

If the statesman acts in this spirit, he will have an acknowl- 
edged right, under certain circumstances, to begin a war, 
regarded as necessary, at the most favorable moment, and to 
secure for his country the proud privilege of such initiative. 
If a war, on which a Minister cannot willingly decide, is bound 
to be fought later under possibly far more unfavorable con- 
ditions, a heavy responsibility for the greater sacrifices that 
must then be made will rest on those whose strength and 
courage for decisive political action failed at the favorable 
moment. 



The man whose high and responsible lot is to steer the for- 
tunes of a great State must be able to disregard the verdict 
of his contemporaries ; but he must be all the clearer as to 
the motives of his own policy, and keep before his eyes, with 
the full weight of the categorical imperative, the teaching of 
Kant: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can at the same 
time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." 1 

He must have a clear conception of the nature and purpose 
of the State, and grasp this from the highest moral standpoint. 
He can in no other way settle the rules of his policy and recog- 
nize clearly the laws of political morality. 

He must also form a clear conception of the special duties 
to be fulfilled by the nation, the guidance of whose fortunes 
rests in his hands. He must clearly and definitely formulate 

1 Kant, "Kritik der praktischen Vernunft," p. 30. [Author's note.] 



i 4 o THE SPIRIT OF THE WARRING NATIONS 

these duties as the fixed goal of statesmanship. When he is 
absolutely clear upon this point, he can judge in each particular 
case what corresponds to the true interests of the State ; then 
only can he act systematically in the definite prospect of 
smoothing the paths of politics, and securing favorable condi- 
tions for the inevitable conflicts; then only, when the hour 
for combat strikes and the decision to fight faces him, can 
he rise with a free spirit and a calm breast to that standpoint 
which Luther once described in blunt, bold language: "It 
is very true that men write and say often what a curse war 
is. But they ought to consider how much greater is that curse 
which is averted by war. Briefly, in the business of war men 
must not regard the massacres, the burnings, the battles, and 
the marches, etc. — that is what the petty and simple do 
who only look with the eyes of children at the surgeon, how 
he cuts off the hand or saws off the leg, but do not see or 
notice that he does it in order to save the whole body. Thus 
we must look at the business of war or the sword with the 
eyes of men, asking, Why these murders and horrors ? It will 
be shown that it is a business, divine in itself, and as needful 
and necessary to the world as eating or drinking, or any other 
work." i 

Thus in order to decide what paths German policy must 
take in order to further the interests of the German people, 
and what possibilities of war are involved, we must first try 
to estimate the problems of State and of civilization which 
are to be solved, and discover what political purposes corre- 
spond to these problems. 

1 Luther, "Whether soldiers can be in a state of salvation." [Author's note.] 



IV 

DEMOCRATIC AND AUTOCRATIC IDEALS OF 
GOVERNMENT 



THE ESSENTIALS OF THE AMERICAN 
CONSTITUTION l 

Elihu Root 

[For a sketch of Elihu Root see page 12. The analysis selected is 
part of two articles which appeared in the North American Review for 
July and August, 1913. They were originally delivered at Princeton in 
1913, and were intended as a discussion of the initiative, referendum, 
and recall.] 



The Constitution of the United States deals in the main 
with essentials. There are some non-essential directions, such 
as those relating to the methods of election and of legislation, 
but in the main it sets forth the foundations of government in 
clear, simple, concise terms. It is for this reason that it has 
stood the test of more than a century with but slight amend- 
ment, while the modern state constitutions, into which a 
multitude of ordinary statutory provisions are crowded, have 
to be changed from year to year. The peculiar and essen- 
tial qualities of the Government established by the Constitu- 
tion are : 

First. It is representative. 

Second. It recognizes the liberty of the individual citizen 
as distinguished from the total mass of citizens, and it pro- 
tects that liberty by specific limitations upon the power of 
government. 

Third. It distributes the legislative, executive, and judicial 
powers, which make up the sum total of all government, into 
three separate departments, and specifically limits the powers 
of the officers in each department. 

1 From "Experiments in Government and Essentials of the Constitution." 
Copyright, 19 13, by the Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission. 

i43 



144 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

Fourth. It superimposes upon a federation of state govern- 
ments a National. Government with sovereignty acting directly 
not merely upon the states, but upon the citizens of each state, 
within a line of limitation drawn between the powers of the 
National Government and the powers of the state govern- 
ments. 

Fifth. It makes observance of its limitations requisite to 
the validity of laws, whether passed by the Nation or by the 
states, to be judged by the courts of law in each concrete case 
as it arises. 

Every one of these five characteristics of the Government 
established by the Constitution was a distinct advance be- 
yond the ancient attempts at popular government, and the 
elimination of any one of them would be a retrograde move- 
ment and a reversion to a former and discarded type of 
government. In each ease it would be the abandonment 
of a distinctive feature of government which has succeeded, 
in order to go back and try again the methods of govern- 
ment which have failed. Of course, we ought not to take 
such a backward step except under the pressure of inevitable 
necessity. 

The first two of the characteristics which I have enumerated, 
those which embrace the conception of representative govern- 
ment and the conception of individual liberty, were the prod- 
ucts of the long process of development of freedom in England 
and America. They were not invented by the makers of the 
Constitution. They have been called inventions of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. They are the chief contributions of that race to 
the political development of civilization. 

The expedient of representation first found its beginning in 
the Saxon witenagemot. It was lost in the Norman Conquest. 
It was restored step by step, through the centuries in which 
Parliament established its power as an institution through the 
granting or withholding of aids and taxes for the King's use. 
It was brought to America by the English colonists. It was 
the practice of the colonies which formed the Federal Union. 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 145 

It entered into the Constitution as a matter of course, because 
it was the method by which modern liberty had been steadily 
growing stronger and broader for six centuries as opposed to 
the direct unrepresentative method of government in which 
the Greek and Roman and Italian Republics had failed. 
This representative system has in its turn impressed itself 
upon the nations which derived their political ideas from 
Rome and has afforded the method through which popular 
liberty has been winning forward in its struggle against royal 
and aristocratic power and privilege the world over. Blunt- 
schli, the great Heidelberg publicist of the last century, says : 

Representative government and self-government are the great 
works of the English and American peoples. The English have pro- 
duced representative monarchy with parliamentary legislation and 
parliamentary government. The Americans have produced the 
representative republic. We Europeans upon the Continent recog- 
nize in our turn that in representative government alone lies the 
hoped-for union between civil order and popular liberty. 



In the first of these lectures I specified certain essential 
characteristics of our system of government, and discussed 
the preservation of the first — ■ its representative character. 
The four other characteristics specified have one feature in 
common. They all aim to preserve rights by limiting power. 

Of these the most fundamental is the preservation in our 
Constitution of the Anglo-Saxon idea of individual liberty. 
The Republics of Greece and Rome had no such conception. 
All political ideas necessarily concern man as a social animal, 
as a member of society — a member of the state. The ancient 
republics, however, put the state first and regarded the individ- 
ual only as a member of the state. They had in view the 
public rights of the state in which all its members shared, and 
the rights of the members as parts of the whole, but they did 
not think of individuals as having rights independent of the 
state, or against the state. They never escaped from the 



146 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

attitude toward public and individual civil rights which was 
dictated by the original and ever-present necessity of military 
organization and defense. 

The Anglo-Saxon idea, on the other hand, looked first to the 
individual. In the early days of English history, without 
theorizing much upon the subject, the Anglo-Saxons began 
to work out their political institutions along the line expressed 
in our Declaration of Independence, that the individual 
citizen has certain inalienable rights — the right to life, to 
liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, and that government is 
not the source of these rights, but is the instrument for the 
preservation and promotion of them. So when a century and 
a half after the Conquest the barons of England set themselves 
to limit the power of the Crown they did not demand a grant 
of rights. They asserted the rights of individual freedom and 
demanded observance of them, and they laid the corner stone 
of our system of government in this solemn pledge of the 
Great Charter: 

No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseized of his 
free hold, or his liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed, or 
exiled, or otherwise destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his 
peers, or by the law of the land. 

Again and again in the repeated confirmations of the Great 
Charter, in the Petition of Rights, in the habeas corpus act, 
in the Bill of Rights, in the Massachusetts body of liberties, 
in the Virginia Bill of Rights, and, finally, in the immortal 
Declaration of 1776 — in all the great utterances of striving 
for broader freedom which have marked the development of 
modern liberty, sounds the same dominant note of insistence 
upon the inalienable right of individual manhood under gov- 
ernment, but independent of government, and, if need be, 
against government, to life and liberty. 

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the conse- 
quences which followed from these two distinct and opposed 
theories of government. The one gave us the dominion, but 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 147 

also the decline and fall of Rome. It followed the French 
declaration of the rights of man, with the negation of those 
rights in the oppression of the Reign of Terror, the despotism 
of Napoleon, the popular submission to the second empire, 
and the subservience of the individual citizen to official 
superiority which still prevails so widely on the Continent of 
Europe. The tremendous potency of the other subdued the 
victorious Normans to the conquered Saxon's conception of 
justice, rejected the claims of divine right by the Stuarts, 
established capacity for self-government upon the inde- 
pendence of individual character that knows no superior 
but the law, and supplied the amazing formative power 
which has molded, according to the course and practice of 
the common law, the thought and custom of the hundred 
millions of men drawn from all lands and all races who in- 
habit this continent north of the Rio Grande. 

The mere declaration of a principle, however, is of little avail 
unless it be supported by practical and specific rules of conduct 
through which the principle shall receive effect. So Magna 
Charta imposed specific limitations upon royal authority to 
the end that individual liberty might be preserved, and so to 
the same end our Declaration of Independence was followed 
by those great rules of right conduct which we call the limi- 
tations of the Constitution. Magna Charta imposed its limi- 
tations upon the kings of England and all their officers and 
agents. Our Constitution imposed its limitations upon the 
sovereign people and all their officers and agents, excluding all 
the agencies of popular government from authority to do the 
particular things which would destroy or impair the declared 
inalienable right of the individual. 

Thus the Constitution provides : No law shall be made by 
Congress prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging 
the freedom of speech or of the press. The right of the people 
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The right of 
the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not 



148 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

be violated. No person shall be subject for the same offense 
to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor be compelled, 
in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself ; nor be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law ; nor shall private property be taken for public use with- 
out just compensation. In all criminal prosecutions, the ac- 
cused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by 
an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime 
shall have been committed ; and to be informed of the nature 
and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses 
against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining wit- 
nesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for 
his defense. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive 
fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted. 
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus- 
pended, except in case of rebellion or invasion. No bill of 
attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. And by the 
fourteenth amendment, no state shall deprive any person of 
life, liberty, or property without due process of law ; nor deny 
to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of 
the law. 

We have lived so long under the protection of these rules 
that most of us have forgotten their importance. They have 
been unquestioned in America so long that most of us have 
forgotten the reasons for them. But if we lose them we shall 
learn the reasons by hard experience. And we are in some 
danger of losing them, not all at once, but gradually, by in- 
difference. 

As Professor Sohm says : "The greatest and most far-reach- 
ing revolutions in history are not consciously observed at the 
time of their occurrence." 

Every one of these provisions has a history. Every one stops 
a way through which the overwhelming power of government 
has oppressed the weak individual citizen, and may do so 
again if the way be opened. Such provisions as these are not 
mere commands. They withhold power. The instant any 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 149 

officer, of whatever kind or grade, transgresses them he ceases 
to act as an officer. The power of sovereignty no longer sup- 
ports him. The majesty of the law no longer gives him au- 
thority. The shield of the law no longer protects him. He 
becomes a trespasser, a despoiler, a lawbreaker, and all the 
machinery of the law may be set in motion for his restraint 
or punishment. It is true that the people who have made 
these rules may repeal them. As restraints upon the people 
themselves they are but self-denying ordinances which the 
people may revoke, but the supreme test of capacity for 
popular self-government is the possession of that power of 
self-restraint through which a people can subject its own 
conduct to the control of declared principles of action. 

These rules of constitutional limitation differ from ordinary 
statutes in this, that these rules are made impersonally, ab- 
stractly, dispassionately, impartially, as the people's expres- 
sion of what they believe to be right and necessary for the 
preservation of their idea of liberty and justice. The process 
of amendment is so guarded by the Constitution itself as to 
require a lapse of time and opportunity for deliberation and 
consideration and the passing away of disturbing influences 
which may be caused by special exigencies or excitements 
before any change can be made. On the contrary, ordinary 
acts of legislation are subject to the considerations of expedi- 
ency for the attainment of the particular objects of the mo- 
ment, to selfish interests, momentary impulses, passions, 
prejudices, temptations. If there be no general rules which 
control particular action, general principles are obscured or 
set aside by the desires and impulses of the occasion. Our 
knowledge of the weakness of human nature and countless 
illustrations from the history of legislation in our own 
country point equally to the conclusion that if govern- 
mental authority is to be controlled by rules of action, it 
cannot be relied upon to impose those rules upon itself at 
the time of action, but must have them prescribed for it 
beforehand. 



i 5 o IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

The second class of limitations upon official power provided 
in our Constitution prescribe and maintain the distribution 
of power to the different departments of government and the 
limitations upon the officers invested with authority in each 
department. This distribution follows the natural and logical 
lines of the distinction between the different kinds of power — ■ 
legislative, executive, and judicial. But the precise allotment 
of power and lines of distinction are not so important as it is 
that there shall be distribution, and that each officer shall be 
limited in accordance with that distribution, for without such 
limitations there can be no security for liberty. If whatever 
great officer of state happens to be the most forceful, skillful, 
and ambitious is permitted to overrun and absorb to himself 
the powers of all other officers and to control their action, 
there ensues that concentration of power which destroys the 
working of free institutions, enables the holder to continue 
himself in power, and leaves no opportunity to the people for 
a change except through a revolution. Numerous instances 
of this very process are furnished by the history of some of 
the Spanish- American Republics. It is of little consequence 
that the officer who usurps the power of others may design 
only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The 
system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to 
do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to 
usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power con- 
centrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully 
observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power 
of every public officer that the workings of free institutions 
can be continued. 

The rigid limitation of official power is necessary not only to 
prevent the deprivation of substantial rights by acts of oppres- 
sion, but to maintain that equality of political condition which 
is so important for the independence of individual character 
among the people of the country. When an officer has au- 
thority over us only to enforce certain specific laws at par- 
ticular times and places, and has no authority regarding 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 151 

anything else, we pay deference to the law which he represents, 
but the personal relation is one of equality. Give to that 
officer, however, unlimited power, or power which we do not 
know to be limited, and the relation at once becomes that of 
an inferior to a superior. The inevitable result of such a rela- 
tion long continued is to deprive the people of the country of 
the individual habit of independence. This may be observed 
in many of the countries of Continental Europe, where official 
persons are treated with the kind of deference, and exercise 
the kind of authority, which are appropriate only to the rela- 
tions between superior and inferior. 

So the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, after limiting 
the powers of each department to its own field, declares that 
this is done "to the end it may be a government of laws and 
not of men." 

The third class of limitations I have mentioned are those 
made necessary by the novel system which I have described 
as superimposing upon a federation of state governments a 
national government acting directly upon the individual 
citizens of the states. This expedient was wholly unknown 
before the adoption of our Constitution. All the confedera- 
tions which had been attempted before that time were simply 
leagues of states, and whatever central authority there was 
derived its authority from and had its relations with the 
states as separate bodies politic. This was so of the old Con- 
federation. Each citizen owed his allegiance to his own state 
and each state- had its obligations to the Confederation. Under 
our constitutional system, in every part of the territory of 
every state there are two sovereigns, and every citizen owes 
allegiance to both sovereigns — to his state and to his nation. 
In regard to some matters, which may generally be described 
as local, the state is supreme. In regard to other matters, 
which may generally be described as national, the nation is 
supreme. It is plain that to maintain the line between these 
two sovereignties operating in the same territory and upon 
the same citizens is a matter of no little difficulty and delicacy. 



152 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

Nothing has involved more constant discussion in our political 
history than questions of conflict between these two powers, 
and we fought the great Civil War to determine the question 
whether in case of conflict the allegiance to the state or the 
allegiance to the nation was of superior obligation. We should 
observe that the Civil War arose because the Constitution did 
not draw a clear line between the national and state powers 
regarding slavery. It is of very great importance that both of 
these authorities, state and national, shall be preserved to- 
gether and that the limitations which keep each within its 
proper province shall be maintained. If the power of the 
states were to override the power of the nation, we should 
ultimately cease to have a nation and become only a body of 
really separate, although confederated, state sovereignties 
continually forced apart by diverse interests and ultimately 
quarreling with one another and separating altogether. On 
the other hand, if the power of the nation were to override 
that of the states and usurp their functions, we should have 
this vast country, with its great population, inhabiting widely 
separated regions, differing in climate, in production, in in- 
dustrial and social interests and ideas, governed in all its local 
affairs by one all-powerful central government at Washington, 
imposing upon the home life and behavior of each community 
the opinions and ideas of propriety of distant majorities. Not 
only would this be intolerable and alien to the idea of free 
self-government, but it would be beyond the power of a central 
government to do directly. Decentralization would be made 
necessary by the mass of government business to be trans- 
acted, and so our separate localities would come to be gov- 
erned by delegated authority — by proconsuls authorized 
from Washington to execute the will of the great majority 
of the whole people. No one can doubt that this also would 
lead by its different route to the separation of our Union. 
Preservation of our dual system of government, carefully 
restrained in each of its parts by the limitations of the 
Constitution, has made possible our growth in local 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 153 

self-government and national power in the past, arid, so far 
as we can see, it is essential to the continuance of that 
government in the future. 

All of these three classes of constitutional limitations are 
therefore necessary to the perpetuity of our Government. I 
do not wish to be understood as saying that every single 
limitation is essential. There are some limitations that might 
be changed and something different substituted; but the 
system of limitation must be continued if our governmental 
system is to continue — if we are not to lose the fundamental 
principles of government upon which our Union is maintained 
and upon which our race has won the liberty secured by law 
for which it has stood foremost in the world. 

Lincoln covered this subject in one of his comprehensive 
statements that cannot be quoted too often. He said in his 
first inaugural : 

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limi- 
tations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of 
popular opinion and sentiment is the only true sovereign of a 
free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or 
despotism. 

Rules of limitation, however, are useless unless they are en- 
forced. The reason for restraining rules arises from a tendency 
to do the things prohibited. Otherwise no rule would be 
needed. Against all practical rules of limitation — all rules 
limiting official conduct — there is a constant pressure from 
one side or the other. Honest differences of opinion as to the 
extent of power, arising from different points of view, make 
this inevitable, to say nothing of those weaknesses and faults 
of human nature which lead men to press the exercise of 
power to the utmost under the influence of ambition, of im- 
patience with opposition to their designs, of selfish interest 
and the arrogance of office. No mere paper rules will restrain 
these powerful and common forces of human nature. The 
agency by which, under our system of government, observance 



154 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

of constitutional limitation is enforced is the judicial power. 
The Constitution provides that : 

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall 
be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall 
be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the su- 
preme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound 
thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the 
contrary notwithstanding. 

Under this provision an enactment by Congress not made in 
pursuance of the Constitution or an enactment of a state con- 
trary to the Constitution is not a law. Such an enactment 
should strictly have no more legal effect than the resolution 
of any private debating society. The Constitution 1 also pro- 
vides that the judicial power of the United States shall extend 
to all cases in law and equity arising under the Constitution 
and laws of the United States. Whenever, therefore, in a case 
before a Federal court rights are asserted under or against 
some law which is claimed to violate some limitation of the 
Constitution, the court is obliged to say whether the law does 
violate the Constitution or not, because if it does not violate 
the Constitution, the court must give effect to it as law, while 
if it does violate the Constitution, it is no law at all and the 
court is not at liberty to give effect to it. The courts do not 
render decisions like imperial rescripts declaring laws valid 
or invalid. They merely render judgment on the rights of the 
litigants in particular cases, and in arriving at their judgment 
they refuse to give effect to statutes which they find clearly 
not to be made in pursuance of the Constitution, and there- 
fore to be no laws at all. Their judgments are technically 
binding only in the particular case decided ; but the knowl- 
edge that the court of last resort has reached such a conclusion 
concerning a statute, and that a similar conclusion would un- 
doubtedly be reached in every case of an attempt to found 
rights upon the same statute, leads to a general acceptance 
of the invalidity of the statute. 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 155 

There is only one alternative to having the courts decide 
upon the validity of legislative acts, and that is by requiring 
the courts to treat the opinion of the legislature upon the 
validity of its statutes, evidenced by their passage, as con- 
clusive. But the effect of this would be that the legislature 
would not be limited at all except by its own will. All the 
provisions designed to maintain a government carried on by 
officers of limited powers, all the distinctions between what 
is permitted to the national government and what is per- 
mitted to the state governments, all the safeguards of the 
life, liberty, and property of the citizen against arbitrary 
power would cease to bind Congress, and on the same theory 
they would cease also to bind the legislatures of the states. 
Instead of the Constitution being superior to the laws the 
laws would be superior to the Constitution, and the essential 
principles of our Government would disappear. More than 
100 years ago Chief Justice Marshall, in the great case of 
Marbury v. Madison, set forth the view upon which our 
Government has ever since proceeded. He said : 

The powers of the legislature are defined and limited ; and that 
those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the Constitution is 
written. To what purpose are powers limited and to what purpose 
is that limit committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, 
be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction 
between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abol- 
ished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are 
imposed and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obliga- 
tion. It is a proposition too plain to be contested that the Consti- 
tution controls any legislative ac repugnant to it, or that the legis- 
lature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act. 

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The 
Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by 
ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts 
and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please 
to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then 
a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law ; if the 
latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts 



156 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

on the part of the people to limit a power, in its own nature, 
illimitable. 

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions con- 
template them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of 
the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government 
must be that an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitu- 
tion is void. This theory is essentially attached to a written consti- 
tution and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of 
the fundamental principles of our society. 

And of the same opinion was Montesquieu, who gave the 
high authority of the Esprit des Lois to the declaration that — 

There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separate from 
the legislative and executive powers ; were it joined with the legis- 
lative the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbi- 
trary control. 

It is to be observed that the wit of man has not yet devised 
any better way of reaching a just conclusion as to whether a 
statute does or does not conflict with a constitutional limita- 
tion upon legislative power than the submission of the ques- 
tion to an independent and impartial court. The courts are 
not parties to the transactions upon which they pass. They 
are withdrawn by the conditions of their office from partici- 
pation in business and political affairs out of which litigations 
arise. Their action is free from the chief dangers which 
threaten the undue extension of power, because, as Hamilton 
points out in the Federalist, they are the weakest branch of 
government ; they neither hold the purse, as does the legis- 
lature, nor the sword, as does the executive. During all our 
history they have commanded and deserved the respect and 
confidence of the people. General acceptance of their con- 
clusions has been the chief agency in preventing here the 
discord and strife which afflict so many lands and in preserv- 
ing peace and order and respect for law. 

A number of countries have copied our Constitution, coupled 
with a provision that the constitutional guaranties may be 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 157 

suspended in case of necessity. We are all familiar with the 
result. The guaranties of liberty and justice and order have 
been forgotten; the government is dictatorship and the 
popular will is expressed only by revolution. 

Nor, so far as our national system is concerned, has there 
yet appeared any reason to suppose that suitable laws to 
meet the new conditions cannot be enacted without either 
overriding or amending the Constitution. The liberty of 
contract and the right of private property which are pro- 
tected by the limitations of the Constitution are held subject 
to the police power of government to pass and enforce laws 
for the protection of the public health, public morals, and 
public safety. The scope and character of the regulations 
required to accomplish these objects vary as the conditions 
of life in the country vary. Many interferences with contract 
and with property which would have been unjustifiable a 
century ago are demanded by the conditions which exist 
now and are permissible without violating any constitutional 
limitation. What will promote these objects the legislative 
power decides with large discretion, and the courts have no 
authority to review the exercise of that discretion. It is only 
when laws are passed under color of the police power and 
having no real or substantial relation to the purposes for which 
the power exists that the courts can refuse to give them effect. 

By a multitude of judicial decisions in recent years our courts 
have sustained the exercise of this vast and progressive power 
in dealing with the new conditions of life under a great variety 
of circumstances. The principal difficulty in sustaining the 
exercise of the power has been caused ordinarily by the fact 
that carelessly or ignorantly drawn statutes either have failed 
to exhibit the true relation between the regulation proposed 
and the object sought or have gone further than the attain- 
ment of the legitimate object justified. A very good illus- 
tration of this is to be found in the Federal employer's liability 
act, which was carelessly drawn and passed by Congress in 
1906 and was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, 



158 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

but which was carefully drawn and passed by Congress in 
1908 and was declared constitutional by the same court. 

Insistence upon hasty and violent methods rather than 
orderly and deliberate methods is really a result of impatience 
with the slow methods of true progress in popular government. 
We should probably make little progress were there not in 
every generation some men who, realizing evils, are eager for 
reform, impatient of delay, indignant at opposition, and in- 
tolerant of the long, slow processes by which the great body 
of the people may consider new proposals in all their relations, 
weigh their advantages and disadvantages, discuss their 
merits, and become educated either to their acceptance or 
rejection. Yet that is the method of progress in which no 
step, once taken, needs to be retraced, and it is the only way 
in which a democracy can avoid destroying its institutions 
by the impulsive substitution of novel and attractive but im- 
practicable expedients. 

The wisest of all the fathers of the Republic has spoken, 
not for his own day alone, but for all generations to come after 
him, in the solemn admonitions of the Farewell Address. It 
was to us that Washington spoke when he said : 

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make 
and to alter their constitutions of government, but the Constitu- 
tion which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authen- 
tic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. . . . 
Towards the preservation of your Government and the perma- 
nency of your present happy state it is requisite not only that you 
steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged 
authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation 
upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method 
of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution altera- 
tions which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to under- 
mine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to 
which you may be invited remember that time and habit are at 
least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of 
other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard 
by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a 



ESSENTIALS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 159 

country ; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothe- 
sis and opinion, exposes to perpetual changes from the endless 
variety of hypothesis and opinion. 

While in the nature of things each generation must assume 
the task of adapting the working of its government to new 
conditions of life as they arise, it would be the folly of ignorant 
conceit for any generation to assume that it can lightly and 
easily improve upon the work of the founders in those matters 
which are, by their nature, of universal application to the 
permanent relations of men in civil society. 

Religion, the philosophy of morals, the teaching of history, 
the experience of every human life, point to the same con- 
clusion — that in the practical conduct of life the most diffi- 
cult and the most necessary virtue is self-restraint. It is the 
first lesson of childhood ; it is the quality for which great 
monarchs are most highly praised ; the man who has it not 
is feared and shunned ; it is needed most where power is 
greatest ; it is needed more by men acting in a mass than by 
individuals, because men in the mass are more irresponsible 
and difficult of control than individuals. The makers of our 
Constitution, wise and earnest students of history and of life, 
discerned the great truth that self-restraint is the supreme 
necessity and the supreme virtue of a democracy. The people 
of the United States have exercised that virtue by the estab- 
lishment of rules of right action in what we call the limitations 
of the Constitution, and until this day they have rigidly ob- 
served those rules. The general judgment of students of 
government is that the success and permanency of the Amer- 
ican system of government are due to the establishment and 
observance of such general rules of conduct. Let us change 
and adapt our laws as the shifting conditions of the times 
require, but let us never abandon or weaken this funda- 
mental and essential characteristic of our ordered liberty. 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 1 
James Bryce 

[James Bryce (1838- ) has been prominent in English political 
and intellectual life since 1864, when he published his brilliant history 
"The Holy Roman Empire." He is best known in America as British 
Ambassador from 1907 to 19x3 and as the author of "The American 
Commonwealth" (1888, revised in 1910), generally admitted to be the 
best exposition of the American system of government, Federal and 
state, yet written. Since the beginning of the World War, he has headed 
two important commissions, on Belgian and Armenian atrocities re- 
spectively. See page 305 for another selection by the same author.] 

Those merits of American government which belong to its 
Federal Constitution have already been discussed : 2 we have 
now to consider such as now from the rule of public opinion, 
from the temper, habits, and ideas of the people. 

The first is that of stability. As one test of a human body's 
soundness is its capacity for reaching a great age, so it is high 
praise for a political system that it has stood no more changed 
than any institution must change in a changing world, and that 
it now gives every promise of durability. The people are 
profoundly attached to the form which their national life 
has taken. The Federal Constitution has been, to their eyes, 
an almost sacred thing, an Ark of the Covenant, whereon no 
man may lay rash hands. All over Europe one hears schemes 
of radical change freely discussed. There is still a monarchical 
party in France, a republican party in Italy and Spain, a 
social democratic party everywhere, not to speak of sporadic 
anarchist groups. Even in England, it is impossible to feel 

1 From Chapter CII, "The American Commonwealth." Copyright, 1910, 
The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission. 

2 See Chapters XXVII-XXX in vol. i. [Author's note.] 

160 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 161 

confident that any one of the existing institutions of the 
country will be standing fifty years hence. But in the United 
States the discussion of political problems busies itself with 
details, so far as the native Americans are concerned, and 
assumes that the main lines must remain as they are forever. 
This conservative spirit, jealously watchful even in small 
matters, sometimes prevents reforms, but it assures to the 
people an easy mind, and a trust in their future which they 
feel to be not only a present satisfaction but a reservoir 
of strength. 

The best proof of the well-braced solidity of the system is 
that it survived the Civil War, changed only in a few points 
which have not greatly affected the balance of national and 
state powers. Another must have struck every European 
traveler who questions American publicists about the insti- 
tutions of their country. When I first traveled in the United 
States, I used to ask thoughtful men, superior to the prej- 
udices of custom, whether they did not think the states' 
system defective in such and such points, whether the legis- 
lative authority of Congress might not profitably be extended, 
whether the suffrage ought not to be restricted as regards 
negroes or immigrants, and so forth. Whether assenting or 
dissenting, the persons questioned invariably treated such 
matters as purely speculative, saying that the present arrange- 
ments were too deeply rooted for their alteration to come 
within the horizon of practical politics. So when serious 
trouble arises, such as might in Europe threaten revolution, 
the people face it quietly, and assume that a tolerable solution 
will be found. At the disputed election of 1876, when each of 
the two great political parties, heated with conflict, claimed 
that its candidate had been chosen President, and the Consti- 
tution supplied no way out of the difficulty, public tranquillity 
was scarcely disturbed, and the public funds fell but little. 
A method was invented of settling the question which both 
sides acquiesced in, and although the decision was a boundless 
disappointment to the party which had cast the majority of 



1 62 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

the popular vote, that party quietly submitted to lose those 
spoils of office whereon its eyes had been feasting. 

Feeling the law to be their own work, the people are disposed 
to obey the law. In a preceding chapter I have examined 
instances of the disregard of the law, and the supersession of 
its tardy methods by the action of the crowd. Such instances, 
serious as they are, do not disentitle the nation as a whole to the 
credit of law-abiding habits. It is the best result that can be 
ascribed to the direct participation of the people in their 
government that they have the love of the maker for his 
work, that every citizen looks upon a statute as a regulation 
made by himself for his own guidance no less than for that of 
others, every official as a person he has himself chosen, and 
whom it is therefore his interest, with no disparagement to 
his personal independence, to obey. Plato thought that those 
who felt their own sovereignty would be impatient of all 
control : nor is it to be denied that the principle of equality 
may result in lowering the status and dignity of a magistrate. 
But as regards law and order the gain much exceeds the loss, 
for every one feels that there is no appeal from the law, behind 
which there stands the force of the nation. Such a temper 
can exist and bear fruits only where minorities, however 
large, have learned to submit patiently to majorities, however 
small. But that is the one lesson which the American govern- 
ment through every grade and in every department daily 
teaches, and which it has woven into the texture of every 
citizen's mind. The habit of living under a rigid constitution 
superior to ordinary statutes — indeed two rigid constitutions, 
since the state constitution is a fundamental law within 
its own sphere, no less than is the Federal — intensifies this 
legality of view, since it may turn all sorts of questions which 
have not been determined by a direct vote of the people into 
questions of legal construction. It even accustoms people to 
submit to see their direct vote given in the enactment of a 
state constitution nullified by a decision of a court holding that 
the Federal Constitution has been contravened. Every page 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 163 

of American history illustrates the wholesome results. The 
events of the last few years present an instance of the con- 
straint which the people put on themselves in order to respect 
every form of law. The Mormons, a community not exceed- 
ing 140,000 persons, persistently defied all the efforts of 
Congress to root out polygamy, a practice eminently repulsive 
to American notions. If they had inhabited a state, Congress 
could not have interfered at all, but as Utah was then only a 
territory, Congress had not only a power of legislating for it 
which overrides territorial ordinances passed by the local 
legislature, but the right to apply military force independent 
of local authorities. Thus the Mormons were really at the 
mercy of the Federal government, had it chosen to employ 
violent methods. But by intrenching themselves behind 
the letter of the Constitution, they continued for many years 
to maintain their " peculiar institution" by evading the 
statutes passed against it and challenging a proof which under 
the common law rules of evidence it was usually impossible 
to give. Declaimers hounded on Congress to take arbitrary 
means for the suppression of the practice, but Congress and 
the Executive submitted to be outwitted rather than depart 
from the accustomed principles of administration, and suc- 
ceeded at last only by a statute whose searching but strictly 
constitutional provisions the recalcitrants failed to evade. 
The same spirit of legality shows itself in misgoverned cities. 
Even where it is notorious that officials have been chosen by 
the grossest fraud and that they are robbing the city, the 
body of the people, however indignant, recognize the au- 
thority, and go on paying the taxes which a Ring levies, 
because strict legal proof of the frauds and robberies is not 
forthcoming. Wrongdoing supplies a field for the display 
of virtue. 

There is a broad simplicity about the political ideas of the 
people, and a courageous consistency in carrying them out in 
practice. When they have accepted a principle, they do not 
shrink from applying it " right along," however disagreeable 



1 64 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

in particular cases some of the results may be. I am far from 
meaning that they are logical in the French sense of the word. 
They have little taste either for assuming abstract proposi- 
tions or for syllogistically deducing practical conclusions there- 
from. But when they have adopted a general maxim of policy 
or rule of action they show more faith in it than the English 
for instance would do, they adhere to it where the English 
would make exceptions, they prefer certainty and uniformity 
to the advantages which might occasionally be gained by 
deviation. If this tendency is partly the result of obedience 
to a rigid constitution, it is no less due to the democratic dis- 
like of exceptions and complexities, which the multitude finds 
not only difficult of comprehension but disquieting to the 
individual who may not know how they will affect him. Take 
for instance the boundless freedom of the press. There are 
abuses obviously incident to such freedom, and these abuses 
have not failed to appear. But the Americans deliberately 
hold that in view of the benefits which such freedom on the 
whole promises, abuses must be borne with and left to the 
sentiment of the people and to the private law of libel. 
When the Ku Klux outrages disgraced several of the Southern 
States after the military occupation of those states had 
ceased, there was much to be said for sending back the troops 
to protect the negroes and Northern immigrants. But the 
general judgment that things ought to be allowed to take 
their natural course prevailed; and the result justified this 
policy, for the outrages after a while died out, when ordinary 
self-government had been restored. When recently a gigantic 
organization of unions of working men, purporting to unite 
the whole of American labor, attempted to enforce its 
sentences against particular firms or corporations by a 
boycott in which all laborers were urged to join, there was 
displeasure, but no panic, no call for violent remedies. The 
prevailing faith in liberty and in the good sense of the mass 
was unshaken ; and the result soon justified this tranquil 
faith. Such a tendency is not an unmixed blessing, for it 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 165 

sometimes allows evils to go too long unchecked. But in 
giving equability to the system of government it gives steadi- 
ness and strength. It teaches the people patience, accustoming 
them to expect relief only by constitutional means. It confirms 
their faith in their institutions, as friends value one another 
more when their friendship has stood the test of a journey full 
of hardships. 

American government, relying very little on officials, has the 
merit of arming them with little power of arbitrary inter- 
ference. The reader who has followed the description of 
Federal authorities, state authorities, county and city or town- 
ship authorities, may think there is a good deal of administra- 
tion; but the description has been minute just because the 
powers of each authority are so carefully and closely restricted. 
It is natural to fancy that a government of the people and by 
the people will be led to undertake many and various functions 
for the people, and in the confidence of its strength will con- 
stitute itself a general philanthropic agency for their social 
and economic benefit. Of later years a current has begun to 
run in this direction. 1 But the paternalism of America differs 
from that of Europe in acting not so much through officials 
as through the law. That is to say, when it prescribes to a 
citizen a course of action it relies upon the ordinary legal sanc- 
tions, instead of investing the administrative officers with 
inquisitorial duties or powers that might prove oppressive, 
and when it devolves active functions upon officials, they are 
functions serving to aid the individual and the community 
rather than to interfere with or supersede the action of pri- 
vate enterprise. Having dwelt on the evils which may flow 
from the undue application of the doctrine of direct popular 
sovereignty, I must remind the European reader that it is 
only fair to place to the credit of that doctrine and of the 
arrangements it has dictated, the intelligence which the 
average native American shows in his political judgments, 
the strong sense he entertains of the duty of giving a vote, 

1 See Chapter XCV. [Author's note.] 



1 66 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

the spirit of alertness and enterprise, which has made him self- 
helpful above all other men. 



The government of the Republic, limited and languid in 
ordinary times, is capable of developing immense vigor. It 
can pull itself together at moments of danger, can put forth 
unexpected efforts, can venture on stretches of authority 
transcending not only ordinary practice but even ordinary 
law. This is the result of the unity of the nation. A divided 
people is a weak people, even if it obeys a monarch ; a united 
people is doubly strong when it is democratic, for then the 
force of each individual will swells the collective force of the 
government, encourages it, relieves it from internal embar- 
rassments. Now the American people is united at moments of 
national concern from two causes. One is that absence of class 
divisions and jealousies which has been already described. 
The people are homogeneous : a feeling which stirs them stirs 
alike rich and poor, farmers and traders, Eastern men and 
Western men — one may now add, Southern men also. Their 
patriotism has ceased to be defiant, and is conceived as the 
duty of promoting the greatness and happiness of their 
country, a greatness which, as it does not look to war or 
aggression, does not redound specially, as it might in Europe, 
to the glory or benefit of the ruling caste or the military pro- 
fession, but to that of all the citizens. The other source of 
unity is the tendency in democracies for the sentiment of the 
majority to tell upon the sentiment of a minority. That 
faith in the popular voice whereof I have already spoken 
strengthens every feeling which has once become strong, and 
makes it rush like a wave over the country, sweeping every- 
thing before it. I do not mean that the people become wild 
with excitement, for beneath their noisy demonstrations they 
retain their composure and shrewd view of facts. I mean only 
that the pervading sympathy stirs them to unwonted efforts. 
The steam is superheated, but the effect is seen only in the 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 167 

greater expansive force which it exerts. Hence a spirited 
executive can in critical times go forward with a courage and 
confidence possible only to those who know that they have a 
whole nation behind them. The people fall into rank at once. 
With that surprising gift for organization which they possess, 
they concentrate themselves on the immediate object; they 
dispense with the ordinary constitutional restrictions ; they 
make personal sacrifices which remind one of the self-devotion 
of Roman citizens in the earlier days of Rome. 

Speaking thus, I am thinking chiefly of the spirit evolved by 
the Civil War in both the North and the South. But the sort 
of strength which a democratic government derives from its 
direct dependence on the people is seen in many smaller 
instances. In 1863, when on the making of a draft of men for 
the war, the Irish mob rose in New York City, excited by 
the advance of General Robert E. Lee into Pennsylvania, the 
state governor called out the troops, and by them restored 
order with a stern vigor which would have done credit to 
Radetzsky or Cavaignac. More than a thousand rioters were 
shot down, and public opinion entirely approved the slaughter. 
Years after the war, when the Orangemen of New York pur- 
posed to have a 12th of July procession through the streets, 
the Irish Catholics threatened to prevent it. The feeling of 
the native Americans was aroused at once; young men of 
wealth came back from their mountain and seaside resorts 
to fill the militia regiments which were called out to guard 
the procession, and the display of force was so overwhelming 
that no disturbance followed. These Americans had no 
sympathy with the childish and mischievous partisanship 
which leads the Orangemen to perpetuate Old World feuds 
on New World soil. But processions were legal, and they were 
resolved that the law should be respected, and the spirit of 
disorder repressed. They would have been equally ready to 
protect a Roman Catholic procession. 

Given an adequate occasion, executive authority in America 
can better venture to take strong measures, and feels more 



1 68 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

sure of support from the body of the people, than is the case 
in England. When there is a failure to enforce the law, the 
fault lies at the door, not of the people, but of timid or time- 
serving officials who fear to offend some interested section 
of the voters. 

Democracy has not only taught the Americans how to use 
liberty without abusing it, and how to secure equality : it 
has also taught them fraternity. That word has gone out of 
fashion in the Old World, and no wonder, considering what 
was done in its name in 1793, considering also that it still 
figures in the program of assassins. Nevertheless, there is 
in the United States a sort of kindliness, a sense of human 
fellowship, a recognition of the duty of mutual help owed by 
man to man, stronger than anywhere in the Old World, and 
certainly stronger than in the upper or middle classes of 
England, France, or Germany. The natural impulse of every 
citizen in America is to respect every other citizen, and to 
feel that citizenship constitutes a certain ground of respect. 
The idea of every man's equal rights is so fully realized that 
the rich or powerful man feels it no indignity to take his' 
turn among the crowd, and does not expect any deference 
from the poorest. Whether or no an employer of labor has 
any stronger sense of his duty to those whom he employs than 
employers have in continental Europe, he has certainly a 
greater sense of responsibility for the use of his wealth. The 
number of gifts for benevolent and other public purposes, 
the number of educational, artistic, literary, and scientific 
foundations, is larger than even in Britain, the wealthiest and 
most liberal of European countries. Wealth is generally felt 
to be a trust, and exclusiveness condemned not merely as 
indicative of selfishness, but as a sort of offense against the 
public. No one, for instance, thinks of shutting up his pleas- 
ure-grounds ; he seldom even builds a wall round them, 
but puts up only a low railing, so that the sight of his trees 
and shrubs is enjoyed by passers-by. That any one should be 
permitted either by opinion or by law to seal up many miles 



THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 169 

of beautiful mountain country against tourists or artists is 
to the ordinary American almost incredible. Such things are 
to him marks of a land still groaning under feudal tyranny. 



The characteristics of the American people which I have 
passed in review, though not all due to democratic government, 
have been strengthened by it, and contribute to its solidity 
and to the smoothness of its working. As one sometimes sees 
an individual man who fails in life because the different parts 
of his nature seem unfitted to each other, so that his action, 
swayed by contending influences, results in nothing definite 
or effective, so one sees nations whose political institutions 
are either in advance of or lag behind their social conditions, 
so that the unity of the body politic suffers, and the harmony 
of its movements is disturbed. America is not such a nation. 
There have, no doubt, been two diverse influences at work 
on the minds of men. One is the conservative English spirit, 
brought from home, expressed, and (if one may say so) 
intrenched in those fastnesses of the Federal Constitution, 
and (to a less degree) of the state constitutions, which reveal 
their English origin. The other is the devotion to democratic 
equality and popular sovereignty, due partly to Puritanism, 
partly to abstract theory, partly to the circumstances of the 
Revolutionary struggle. But since neither of these two 
streams of tendency has been able to overcome the other, 
they have at last become so blent as to form a definite type of 
political habits, and a self-consistent body of political ideas. 
Thus it may now be said that the country is made all of a 
piece. Its institutions have become adapted to its economic 
and social conditions and are the due expression of its char- 
acter. The new wine has been poured into new bottles: or 
to adopt a metaphor more appropriate to the country, the 
vehicle has been built with a lightness, strength, and elasticity 
which fit it for the roads it has to traverse. 



THE ATTITUDE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN A 
DEMOCRACY * 

Charles Evans Hughes 

[Charles Evans Hughes (1862- ) was educated at Brown Uni- 
versity and first came into prominence by his fearless investigation of 
insurance companies in New York City. He has served as Governor of 
New York and as an associate justice of the United States Supreme 
Court. In 1916 he was the Republican candidate for President. The 
present selection is part of the first of three addresses delivered at 
Yale in 1910, and vigorously restates in terms of to-day "the public 
duty of educated men."] 

When one is about to loose the ties of delightful association 
in college and to face a world of competitive efforts, he 
naturally asks himself, "What is to be my lot in life?" 
"Where shall I find a chance to prove what I can do ? " "How 
shall I win for myself a place of security protected by my 
energy or ingenuity or thrift from the possible assaults of 
misfortune?" "How can I achieve a competence or a for- 
tune, or distinction?" For many, perhaps most, young men, 
the pressure of necessity is so strong, or ambition is so keen or 
the vision of opportunity is so alluring that these questions 
seem to transcend all others and too frequently suggest the 
dominant motive. 

But there is another question, too rarely denned in conscious 
self-discipline, yet urged by a myriad of voices whose appeal 
dimly heard in the medley and confusion of the market place 
sounds the deep tone of democracy, — -"What shall be my 
attitude toward the community ? " "How shall I relate myself 
to that struggling, achieving mass of humanity, — the people 

1 From "Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government." Copyright, 
19 10, by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission. 

170 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 171 

of this great country?" "What part shall I play, not as a 
unit fighting other units for individual advantage, but as a 
citizen of a Republic?" 

Probably every one of you has been impressed with the 
forces of progress. I do not refer merely to those represented 
in production and exchange, significant as are these activities 
of an energetic and talented people. The large success and 
expansion of industry, the increase of wants and the ability 
to supply them, the extraordinary development in facilities of 
communication, are a sufficient answer to any who would speak 
of decadence in energy or will. But even more significant are 
the multiplying indications of earnest desire for the better- 
ment of community life. I refer to the fine endeavors that 
are being made to extend and perfect the means of education ; 
to improve conditions of labor ; to secure better housing and 
sanitation ; to stay the ravages of communicable disease ; to 
provide proper care for the afflicted and defective in body and 
mind ; to increase reformatory agencies and to improve penal 
methods to the end that society may protect itself without the 
travesty of making its prisons schools of crime; to secure 
higher standards of public service and a higher sense of loyalty 
to the common weal. 

Slight consideration of the course of these endeavors 
emphasizes the lesson that progress is not a blessing conferred 
from without. It merely expresses the gains of individual 
efforts in counteracting the sinister and corrupting influences 
which, if successful, would make democratic institutions 
impossible. Gratifying as is the vast extent and variety of our 
accomplishment, one cannot be insensible to the dangers to 
which we are exposed. No greater mistake can be made than 
to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed 
for the worse. We are a young nation and nothing can be 
taken for granted. If our institutions are maintained in their 
integrity, and if change shall mean improvement, it will be 
because the intelligent and the worthy constantly generate 
the motive power which, distributed over a thousand lines of 



172 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

communication, develops that appreciation of the standards 
of decency and justice which we have delighted to call the 
common sense of the American people. 

Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to 
corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition 
create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The 
vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are the unconscious, 
instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery 
take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks 
to control government, and every increase of governmental 
power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for 
abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. 
Free speech voices the appeals of hate and envy as well as 
those of justice and charity. A free press is made the instru- 
ment of cunning, greed, and ambition, as well as the agency 
of enlightened and independent opinion. How shall we pre- 
serve the supremacy of virtue and the soundness of the com- 
mon judgment? How shall we buttress Democracy? The 
peril of this nation is not in any foreign foe ! We, the people, 
are its power, its peril, and its hope ! 

The causes of indifference to the obligations of citizenship 
may be traced in part to the optimistic feeling that nothing 
can go seriously wrong with us. This may indeed spring from 
belief in the intelligence and moral worth of the people, but 
that belief has ground only as there are predominant evidences 
of a growing sense of the duties imposed by democratic gov- 
ernment, of an appreciation of responsibility enlarging apace 
with the seductions that are incident to material advancement. 
There is also the difficulty of realizing that government is not 
something apart from us, or above us, that it is we ourselves 
organized in a grand cooperative effort to protect mutual 
rights and to secure common opportunity and improvement. 
More potent still is the feeling of helplessness in the presence 
of organized agencies which, with their effective combinations 
based upon mutual interest, seem to make of slight conse- 
quence the efforts of citizens who are not members of inner 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 173 

circles of power. But no organized agency and no combination, 
however strong, can outrage the rights of any community, if 
the community sees fit to assert them. The character of the 
agencies of the community, its instruments of expression, the 
forms of its organized effort are simply what it may desire or 
tolerate. Whatever evil may exist in society or politics simply 
points the question to the individual citizen, "What are you 
doing about it?" 

Before we deal with particular problems and relations, I 
desire to consider the fundamental question of attitude and 
the principles of action which must be regarded as essential 
to the faithful discharge of the civic duties. 

It is of first importance that there should be sympathy with 
democratic ideals. I do not refer to the conventional attitude 
commonly assumed in American utterances and always taken 
on patriotic occasions. I mean the sincere love of Democracy. 
As Montesquieu says : "A love of the republic in a democracy 
is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of 
equality." 

It would be difficult to find an association in which wealth, 
or family, or station are of less consequence, and in which a 
young man is appraised more nearly at his actual worth than 
in an American college. Despite the increase of luxury in 
college living, the number of rich men's sons who frequent 
these institutions, and the amount of money lavishly and 
foolishly expended, our colleges are still wholesomely demo- 
cratic. A young man who is decent, candid, and honorable 
in his dealings will not suffer because he is poor, or his parents 
are obscure, and the fact that he may earn his living in humble 
employment in order to pay for his education will not cost 
him the esteem of his fellows. He will be rated, as the rich 
man's son will be rated, at the worth of his character, judged 
by the standards of youth which maintain truth and fair 
dealing and will not tolerate cant or sham. This is so largely 
true that it may be treated as the rule, and regrettable de- 
partures from it as the exception. 



174 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

But a larger sympathy and appreciation are needed. The 
young man who goes out into life favorably disposed toward 
those who have had much the same environment and oppor- 
tunity may still be lacking in the broader sympathy which 
should embrace all his fellow countrymen. He may be 
tolerant and democratic with respect to those who, despite 
differences in birth and fortune, he may regard as kindred 
spirits, and yet in his relation to men at large, to the great 
majority of his fellow beings, be little better than a snob. Or 
despite the camaraderie of college intercourse he may have 
developed a cynical disposition or an intellectual aloofness 
which, while not marked enough to interfere with success in 
many vocations, or to disturb his conventional relations, 
largely disqualifies him from aiding his community as a 
public-spirited citizen. The primary object of education is to 
emancipate; to free from superstition, from the tyranny of 
worn-out notions, from the prejudices, large and small, which 
enslave the judgment. His study of history and of the insti- 
tutions of his country has been to little purpose if the college 
man has not caught the vision of Democracy and has not 
been joined by the troth of heart and conscience to the great 
human brotherhood which is working out its destiny in this 
land of opportunity. 

The true citizen will endeavor to understand the different 
racial viewpoints of the various elements which enter into our 
population. He will seek to divest himself of antipathy or 
prejudice toward any of those who have come to us from 
foreign lands, and he will try, by happy illustration in his own 
conduct, to hasten appreciation of the American ideal. For 
him " American" will ever be a word of the spirit and not of 
the flesh. Difference in custom or religion will not be per- 
mitted to obscure the common human worth, nor will bigotry 
of creed or relation prevent a just appraisement. The pitiful 
revelations of ignorance and squalor, of waste and folly, will 
not sap his faith. He will patiently seek truly to know himself 
and others, and with fraternal insight to enter into the world's 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 175 

work, to share the joys of accomplishment, and to help in the 
bearing of the burdens of misery. He will be free from the 
prejudice of occupation or of residence. He will not look 
askance either at city or at country. For him any honest 
work will be honorable, and those who are toiling with their 
hands will not be merely economic factors of work, but 
human beings of like passions and possessed of the "certain 
unalienable rights." Neither birth nor station, neither circum- 
stance nor vocation, will win or prevent the esteem to which 
fidelity, honesty, and sincerity are alone entitled. He will 
look neither up nor down, but with even eye will seek to read 
the hearts of men. 

This sense of sympathetic relation should increase respect 
both for individual interests and for community interests and 
should give a better understanding of what is involved in each. 
They are not in opposition ; properly speaking, they cannot 
be divorced. By individual interests I mean those interests 
which concern the normal development of the individual life, 
which relate to freedom in choice of work and individual pur- 
suits, to the conservation of opportunities for the play of 
individual talent and initiative, to the enjoyment of property 
honestly acquired. The liberty of the individual in communi- 
ties must of course be restrained by the mutual requirements 
imposed upon each by the equal rights of others, and by the 
demands of the common welfare. It may be difficult to define 
the precise limitations of such restrictions, but the guiding 
principle must be that the common interest cannot be pre- 
served if individual incentive is paralyzed, and that to preserve 
individual incentive there must be scope for individual effort 
freely expended along lines freely chosen and crowned by 
advantages individually acquired and held. There is no 
alchemy which can transmute the poverty of individual hope 
into communal riches. Restrictions, to be justified, must be 
such as are essential to the maintenance of wholesome life 
and to prevent the liberty of some from accomplishing the 
en thraldom of all. 



176 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

In all its efforts, democracy will make progress in the degree 
that the people cultivate the patience and steadiness of 
justice. The obligations of citizenship are not to be met by 
spasmodic outbursts or by feverish demonstrations of public 
interest. It is true that we make our most important choices 
of the representatives of the people amid the tumult of exag- 
gerated and interested appeals. To a superficial observer the 
excitements of a political campaign would seem to imply the 
dethronement of reason. But it is to the credit of our people 
that they are so largely deliberative and have proved them- 
selves so well able to sift the chaff from the wheat in political 
arguments, and are so skillful in following the thread of truth 
through the maze of prejudiced assertion and cunning perversion. 
If we were governed by gusts of passion and lost our heads in 
the turmoil of political strife, our freedom would be a travesty. 

The desire to know the truth and to deal fairly with men and 
measures is of the essence of good citizenship. The most 
dangerous foes of democratic government are those who seek 
through special privilege to pervert it to selfish uses, and those 
who, by reckless, untruthful, and inflammatory utterances, 
corrupt the public sentiment. The more dangerous is the 
latter. For the motive power of any remedial effort must be 
found in public opinion, and to achieve good results it must be 
just. There are those who take a poor view of our prospects 
because of the recklessness of the sensational press. It is 
difficult for them to conceive that the community can steady 
itself against these constant and insidious assaults upon its 
judgment and sense of proportion. If indeed the people 
believed all they read and their mental attitude and emphasis 
were accurately reflected in headlines and type, it would seem 
cause for despair. But those who are pessimistic with regard 
to the influence of certain portions of the press fail to take 
account of the many forces that determine public sentiment. 
The habit of exaggeration furnishes to a large degree its own 
corrective, and its sensational exhibitions are taken seriously 
by few. The average man is very curious, and the fact that 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 177 

his curiosity will tempt him to buy and read does not neces- 
sarily indicate that what he has read has made much of an 
impression. Men are in constant communication with each 
other, in the shop, in the office, in going to and from their 
work, in the family, in their varied social relations, and in this 
intercourse information and opinions derived from many 
sources are freely interchanged. Their experience of life 
largely determines their point of view. What is read with re- 
gard to men and measures is generally accepted or rejected not 
upon mere assertion, but as it may or may not accord with 
the general opinions which experience has produced. This 
fact points the lesson that the most serious consequences of 
breaches of public trust and of corruption in high places are 
not to be found in the particular injuries inflicted, but in the 
undermining of the public confidence and in the creating of a 
disposition to give credit to charges of similar offending. 
But, as has been said, much of reckless and disproportionate 
statement, much of malicious insinuation, much of frenzied 
and demagogical appeal, fails of its mark. 

While we may be grateful for this, and fully appreciate that 
with the spread of education this capacity of the people to 
resist such assaults will tend to increase, we cannot but be 
sensible of the evil influence that is actually exerted. To com- 
bat this and to maintain in the community standards of can- 
dor and justice should be the aim of every citizen. 

If it be asked how an individual can accomplish aught in 
this direction, it may be answered that it lies with the individ- 
ual to accomplish everything. The man who demands the 
facts, who is willing to stand or fall by the facts, who forms 
his convictions deliberately and adheres to them tenaciously, 
who courts patient inquiry and " plays fair," is a tower of 
strength in any group to which he may be related. We have 
no greater advantage than a free press and the freedom of 
public utterance. We would not lose its benefits because of 
its abuses. Demagoguery will always have a certain influence, 
and the remedy is to be found not in repression or impatient 



178 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

denunciation, but in the multiplication of men of intelligence 
who love justice and cannot be stampeded. 

The citizen should contribute something more than sym- 
pathy with democracy, something more than respect for 
individual and community interests, something more than 
adherence to the standards of fair dealing. Sympathy and 
sentiment will fail of practical effect without independence 
of character. A man owes it to himself so to conduct his life 
that it be recognized that his assent cannot be expected until 
he has been convinced. He should exhibit that spirit of self- 
reliance, that sense of individual responsibility in forming and 
stating opinion, which proclaims that he is a man and not a 
marionette. This of course is a matter of degree varying with 
personality and depends for its beneficial effect upon intelli- 
gence and tact. None the less, the emphasis is needed. There 
are so many who with respect to public affairs lead a life largely 
of self -negation ! They are constantly registering far below 
their capacity and never show anything like the accomplish- 
ment for which they were constructed and equipped. We 
have too many high-power vessels whose power is never used. 

It is constantly urged that men must act in groups and 
through organizations to accomplish anything. This is 
obviously true and describes such a marked tendency that it 
is hardly necessary to point the lesson. The difficulty is not 
to get men to act in groups and through organization, but to 
have groups and organizations act properly and wisely by 
reason of the individual force and independent strength of 
their members. Groups and organizations constantly tend to 
represent the influence and power of one man or a few men, 
who are followed not because they are right, but because they 
lead, and who maintain themselves not so much by the 
propriety and worth of leadership as by their skill and acumen 
in availing themselves of the indifference of others and by use 
of solicitations, blandishments, and patronage. This is illus- 
trated in all forms of association, and to the extent that it 
exists, the association loses its strength and capacity to 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 179 

accomplish the results for which it is intended. Groups and 
organizations within democracy depend upon the same condi- 
tions as those which underlie the larger society. If they come 
into the strong control of a few by reason of the indifference 
and subservience of the many, the form is retained without the 
substance and the benefits of cooperative action are lost. 

It is of course a counsel of wisdom that men should be tactful 
and desirous of cooperating, and not in a constant state of 
rebellion against every effort at group action. But men who are 
eccentric and impossible are proof against counsel ; and their 
peculiarities simply illustrate the exceptional and abnormal 
in society. The normal man naturally tends to work with 
others; to him the sentiment of loyalty makes a powerful 
appeal. And the counsel that is most needed is that men in 
the necessary action of groups should not lose their individual 
power for good by blind following. The man who would meet 
the responsibilities of citizenship must determine that he will 
endeavor justly, after availing himself of all the privileges 
which contact and study afford, to reach a conclusion which for 
him is a true conclusion, and that the action of his group shall 
if possible not be taken until, according to his opportunity 
and his range of influence, his point of view has been presented 
and considered. This does not imply sheer obstinacy or opinion- 
ated stubbornness. Progress consists of a series of approxi- 
mations. But it does imply self-respect, conscientious effort to 
be sound in opinion, respect for similar efforts on the part of 
others, and accommodations in the sincere desire for coopera- 
tive achievement which shall be rational and shall be sensibly 
determined in the light of all facts and of all proposals. It 
also implies that there shall be no surrender that will compromise 
personal integrity or honor, or barter for gain or success one's 
fidelity to the oath of office or to the obligation of public trust. 

A consideration of the obstacles which are found to be suc- 
cessfully interposed to this course is not flattering to those of 
our citizens who have had the greatest advantages. There 
is, in the first place, the base feeling of fear. Lawyers are 



180 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

afraid that they will lose clients ; bankers, that they will 
lose deposits; ministers, that important pew-holders will 
withdraw their support; those who manage public service 
corporations, that they will suffer retaliation. Throughout the 
community is this benumbing dread of personal loss which 
keeps men quiet and servile. 

The first lesson for a young man who faces the world with 
his career in his own hands is that he must be willing to do with- 
out. The question for him at the start and ever after must 
be not simply what he wants to get, but what he is willing to 
lose. " Whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it," is the 
profoundest lesson of philosophy. No one can fight as a good 
soldier the battles of democracy who is constantly seeking cover. 

But still more influential is the desire to avoid controversy 
and to let things go. The average American is good-hearted, 
genial, and indisposed not simply to provoke a quarrel, but 
even to enter into a discussion. By the constant play of his 
humor he seeks to avoid sharp contacts or expression of 
differences. But independence of conviction and the exercise 
of one's proper influence do not imply either ill nature or 
constant collisions with opposing forces. The power of the man 
who is calm and temperate, just and deliberate, who seeks to 
know the truth and to act according to his honest convictions, 
is after all not best figured by the force of arms, but by the 
gracious influence of sunshine and of rain and the quiet play 
of the beneficent forces of nature. In suitably expressing 
his individuality, in presenting his point of view, he need 
not sacrifice his geniality or the pleasures of companionship 
which are always enhanced by mutual respect. 

Then there are the fetters of accumulated obligations. 
The strongest appeal that can be made to an American is to 
his generous sense of obligation because of favors received. 
Men whom no wealth could bribe and no promise could seduce 
will fall in public life victims to a chivalrous regard for those 
who have helped them climb to public place. This is because 
of a strange inversion of values. The supposed private debt 



THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY 181 

is counted more important than the public duty. But there 
are no obligations which friendship or kindly action can 
impose at the expense of public service. It is simply a per- 
verted sentiment which suggests such a demand or the neces- 
sity of meeting it. It is a strange notion, which courses in 
ethics and the benefits of higher education so frequently find 
it difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge. 

Whether you like it or not, the majority will rule. Accept 
loyally the democratic principle. The voice of the majority 
is that neither of God nor of devil, but of men. Do not be 
abashed to be found with the minority, but on the other hand 
do not affect superiority or make the absurd mistake of think- 
ing you are right or entitled to special credit merely because 
you do not agree with the common judgment. Your experience 
of life cannot fail to impress you with the soundness of that 
judgment in the long run, and I believe you will come to put 
your trust, as I do, in the common sense of the people of this 
country, and in the verdicts they give after the discussions of 
press, of platform, and of ordinary intercourse. The dangers 
of the overthrow of reason and of the reign of passion and prej- 
udice become serious only as resentment is kindled by abuses 
for which those who have no sympathy with popular govern- 
ment and constantly decry what they call "mob rule" are 
largely responsible. But whether the common judgment shall 
exhibit that intelligence and self-restraint which have given 
to our system of government so large a degree of success, will 
depend upon your attitude and that of the young men of the 
country who will determine the measure of capacity for self- 
government and progress in the coming years. 

Prize your birthright and let your attitude toward all public 
questions be characterized by such sincere democratic sym- 
pathy, such enthusiasm for the commonweal, such genuine love 
of justice, and such force of character, that your life to the full 
extent of your talent and opportunity shall contribute to the 
reality, the security, and the beneficence of government by 
the people. 



THE PALE SHADE 1 

Gilbert Murray 

[George Gilbert Aime Murray (1866- ), one of the most famous of 
English scholars and poets, was born in Australia, but was educated at 
the Merchant Taylors' School, London, and at Oxford. Since 1908 he 
has been Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. He is widely known for 
his unequaled translations from the Greek, especially his renderings of 
Euripides into English verse of superb felicity and eloquence. Since the 
beginning of the World War he has written extensively in advocacy of a 
liberal and democratic solution of its problems. This admirable essay , from 
which a considerable number of paragraphs have been omitted, is a bril- 
liant discussion of the British Constitution.] 

The British soldier fought in the pale shade of aristocracy. — Napier 

The conception which one country entertains of another is 
always several generations out of date, and nearly always 
based on something romantic or startling. There are still 
plenty of Englishmen, and many more Frenchmen, who in 
their secret hearts conceive of America as a mixture of Bret 
Harte and the "Last of the Mohicans," with a rather regret- 
table surface-dressing of skyscrapers and great inventors 
and millionaires mourning for their kidnaped sons. And I 
have noticed in American popular theaters traces of a belief 
that our farmers still dress in the costumes of George Ill's 
day, and that kings, princesses, earls, and — oddly enough — 
pickpockets play a more prominent part in our daily life than 
is warranted by experience. And neither party likes to lose 
its illusion. Our people are distinctly saddened when they 
hear that there are no more wild buffaloes and that Indians 
are taking university degrees, and sympathetic Americans 

1 From North American Review, September, 191 7. Reprinted by permission. 



THE PALE SHADE 183 

are a little pained and incredulous when our statesmen de- 
scribe England as a " great democracy" and discuss social 
problems without even mentioning the wishes of the King. 

The fact is that in Great Britain the King and the House 
of Lords are both survivals. They are relics of a form of 
government and a structure of society that have both passed 
out of existence. In other countries they would have been 
swept away by a clean-cut revolution about the years 1830- 
1848, but the English habit in reform is never to go further 
than you really want. If your eye offends you, try shutting 
it for a bit ; or use a little ointment or lotion ; or give up 
reading by artificial light. But do not be such a fool as to 
have it taken out until you are perfectly certain you must. 
And still more, if your neighbor offends you : try to put up 
with him, try to get round him, try to diminish his powers 
in the particular point where he is most offensive ; but do not 
hang him or shoot him unless he absolutely insists upon it ; 
and, if you must fight him, do not forget that you will have 
to live with him or his friends afterwards. 

It is this characteristic which has won for England two 
reputations which seem at first sight contradictory. She is 
known as the most Liberal of European nations and also as 
the most Conservative. Both statements are fairly true, and 
they both mean almost the same thing. She is Liberal be- 
cause she believes in letting people do as they like and think 
as they like : she hates oppression and espionage and inter- 
ference except where they are absolutely necessary for the 
public safety ; and for that very same reason she is Conser- 
vative. She adapts herself to new conditions with as little 
disturbance as she conveniently can, and never destroys in- 
stitutions or worries individuals for the sake of mere logical 
consistency. The people who praise her for being Liberal 
would seldom claim that she was specially Progressive. Those 
who call her Conservative would never think of her as Re- 
actionary. The fact is that, for various reasons, she has 
enjoyed greater security, both inside and out, than most 



1 84 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

European nations ; and, being free from fear, she could afford, 
as a general rule, to be patient and good-natured. 

Of these ancient undemocratic institutions which Eng- 
lish Conservatism has left in being while in other democracies 
they have disappeared, the Crown is at once the most con- 
spicuous and the most harmless. No king has ever asserted 
his will against that of the nation since George III, and no 
one seems to anticipate that any king is likely again to do so. 
Such republican feeling as there is in Great Britain — and 
it is markedly less than it was thirty years ago — ■ is idealist 
and theoretic. It is not a protest against felt oppression; 
it is an echo from Mazzini and Kossuth and 1848, and, in 
the last few months, from the great wind of the Russian 
Revolution. The only grievance of a practical kind that 
could be charged against the monarchy is its supposed ex- 
pensiveness. About half a million yearly is voted by Parlia- 
ment to the King's " Civil List." But then many of the 
services now charged to the Civil List would have to continue 
under any system; only instead of being put down under 
this heading, they would be under the Board of Works or 
Public Health or some other government department. And 
experts differ as to whether the expenses actually due di- 
rectly and indirectly to the maintenance of the Crown are 
greater or less than the expenses of a recurrent Presidential 
election would be. • 

The real strength of the monarchy lies in its practical con- 
venience. It hurts no one, and it solves a number of dif- 
ficult problems. The races of India and Egypt and Afghan- 
istan understand loyalty to a king; many of them would 
not understand loyalty to a Parliament. Princes and Rajahs 
of ancient birth and accustomed to magnificence are flat- 
tered by a message from the King-Emperor, or his Viceroy : 
it might be less easy to win their homage for an elected official. 
More important than these considerations is the advantage 
of not having the head of the Empire a party leader. Party 
feeling runs very high in Great Britain. Opinion in the 



THE PALE SHADE 185 

colonies and the dominions is often greatly out of touch with 
opinion at home ; it is generally more democratic, it is often 
less liberal. And it might make a strain on the loyalty, say, 
of Indian soldiers and officials if a radical leader, whom they 
were accustomed to curse every morning at tiffin, were sud- 
denly made the chief magistrate of the Empire. As it is, the 
King has no politics, and people of all views can be loyal to 
him. He represents something permanent amid the changes of 
ministries, something that seems to be England itself, and, if 
people feel disposed to idealize it, does nothing to prevent them. 
The same consideration has some force at home also. 
When party feeling is strong, a change of government pro- 
duces a great strain ; but it would be a far greater strain if 
the hated head of the opposite political party became ac- 
tually the President of the whole British people. As it is the 
Crown and the civil service remain unchanged, so the beaten 
party can comfort itself ; the whole government of the nation 
has not quite been given over into the hands of the wicked ! 
# By the British Constitution the King is a mythical being 
built up by a mass of legal fictions. He is king "by the Grace 
of God"; he can do no wrong; he never dies; he is never 
under age ; he cannot be taxed ; he cannot be arrested. 
Conversely he is the only person in the realm who cannot 
arrest a suspected criminal, because if he arrested by mistake 
an innocent man, no action at law could be taken against 
him, and therefore there would be "a wrong without a 
remedy" ! He is also the fountain of justice and the foun- 
tain of honor, and the sole repository of the prerogative of 
pardon. But when you examine into the meaning of all these 
wonderful statements, they melt into mist. He does no wrong 
because he never does anything. He cannot act except by 
the advice of his ministers. And his ministers are the leaders 
of the political party which represents the majority of the 
nation. He pardons criminals or reduces their sentences, but 
only when the Home Secretary on behalf of the Government 
advises him to do so. He is the fountain of honor and he alone 



186 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

can create peers ; but he only creates those whom the Prime 
Minister recommends. No Act of Parliament is valid without 
his signature, and he can in theory refuse to sign. But it is 
over 200 years since Queen Anne refused the royal assent to a 
certain Scotch Militia Act, and no sovereign since has at- 
tempted to follow her example. At a few great constitutional 
crises, like the passing of the Reform Bill, the hotheads of the 
minority party have talked of persuading the King to veto 
some bill which they thought particularly monstrous ; but 
they have never had their way. 

Does the King then really count for nothing? No ; clearly 
it would not be true to say that. But it is very hard to say 
what his power actually is. Though he cannot ever overrule 
the ministers with whom the House of Commons provides 
him, it must be remembered that he is always in office whereas 
the ministers change. He sees a great deal of the most im- 
portant business of state. He gets to know all the persons of 
political importance in the Kingdom. If he is a man of char- 
acter himself or a good judge of character in others, he is 
pretty sure to obtain sooner or later a considerable personal 
influence, dependent not on his supposed prerogative but on 
his experience and position. Published memoirs enable us to 
say with confidence that in the last generation a proposal 
which had the approval of King Edward or of Queen Victoria 
had generally a smoother career than one which those sover- 
eigns thought harmful. But of course there would be no ques- 
tion in either case of the Crown setting itself up against the 
known will of Parliament. 

It is true then that, to a slight extent, in a matter where 
the will of Parliament and people was not clear, and minis- 
ters were not interested or were divided among themselves, 
the wish of the King, a hereditary and unrepresentative 
officer, might be the deciding force. That is, as far as it goes, 
a defect in the British Constitution from the standpoint of 
pure democracy. But there are few democracies in the world 
that have not worse defects than that. 



THE PALE SHADE 187 

The ardent republican will no doubt insist upon something 
more fundamental. "The Crown," he will say, "produces 
inevitably a false social atmosphere. The air of the Court, 
with its immense interest in small personal questions, with 
its honors and distinctions which depend on the pleasure of 
particular individuals, with its regard for hereditary rank and 
its false standards in judging the world, is an influence es- 
sentially hostile to human dignity and to the spiritual equality 
of man with man. It concentrates attention on itself, and, 
among the masses of thoughtless people at any rate, that 
means concentrating attention on a wrong object. When 
George III was speaking with Dr. Johnson, certainly most 
people in England would have been more interested in listen- 
ing to the King than to the philosopher. And if instead of 
Dr. Johnson, His Majesty had been speaking to Socrates and 
George Washington and Shakespeare all at once, I daresay 
it would have been much the same. When Burke was study- 
ing the French Revolution he was so dazzled by the thought 
of the suffering Queen that he could not see the social and eco- 
nomic distresses of the people of France. ' He pitied the plu- 
mage and forgot the dying bird,' and that is just the state of 
mind which the false glitter of monarchy leads to." 

This argument, as far as it goes, is probably quite true : 
but it is just the sort of argument that middle-aged English- 
men, as a rule, are not much affected by. A Frenchman or 
an Italian perhaps feels it more. An Englishman is apt to 
smile indulgently and say he sees what you mean, but that 
after all in practice he thinks there is not much harm done, 
and that snobbish people would be just as snobbish without 
a Court as with one. 



The House of Lords is, from the political point of view, a 
body hard to defend. It is unrepresentative, it is too large, 
it is drawn too predominantly from one class, and that a class 
whose interests are exceptionally exposed to criticism. Such 



188 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

a Second Chamber stands condemned. Yet we may put in 
some pleas in mitigation of sentence. It would be wrong to 
conceive of the House of Lords as a great mass meeting of 
nearly seven hundred hereditary landowners sitting per- 
manently to obstruct all Liberal reforms. It is only on very 
rare occasions that the mass of peers — the " backwoodsmen" 
as they are called — turn up to vote ; only on the great party 
issues, such as the Home Rule Bill, the Parliament Bill, and 
the like. On ordinary occasions the House of Lords is attended 
by some forty to sixty members, nearly all of them serious, 
eminent, and hard-working public men, and a good number 
of them Liberals. 

The ranks of the peerage are recruited every year by new 
creations ; and, to one who does not expect too much of our 
frail human nature, especially in a region where it is apt to 
be seen at its frailest, the new creations, though far from ideal, 
are, on the whole, by no means unrespectable. The obviously 
bad appointments attract lively public interest ; the good 
ones pass by unnoticed. Of course mere money bags count 
far too much ; of course party services are unduly rewarded. 
Of course the people who work and scheme industriously to 
get a title are more likely to receive one than those who do 
not. Occasionally there is a scandal. One or two have echoed 
across the Atlantic. But if you make a list of the most recent 
peers, you will find among them a very large proportion of 
men who are at the head of their respective professions or 
walks of life, especially of course if they have been engaged 
in law or public administration. Turn up the record of a few 
old House of Lords debates and notice the speakers. You will 
find first several of these recent peers, whose rank is not 
hereditary but has been conferred on them for public services : 
Lord Cromer, a very great governor who reformed the finances 
of Egypt ; Lord Morley, the famous radical philosopher and 
man of letters, friend of Mr. Gladstone and John Stuart Mill ; 
Lord Milner, an extreme imperialist, who is strongly distrusted 
in Liberal circles but certainly achieved his peerage by hard 



THE PALE SHADE 189 

work and personal qualities ; Lord Loreburn, a great lawyer 
and a former Liberal Lord Chancellor; Lord Courtney, 
formerly Chairman of Committees in the House of Commons, 
a leading radical and pacifist ; Lord Parmoor, a Conservative 
lawyer ; two or three Bishops, some very conservative, some 
moderate like the Archbishop of Canterbury, some Socialist, 
like the Bishop of Oxford. Then there are many peers whose 
title is hereditary, but who would probably have attained 
eminence in whatever rank of life they had been born : Lord 
Rosebery, the famous orator ; Lord Crewe, Lord Lansdowne, 
the very accomplished leaders of the Liberal and Conserva- 
tive peers respectively; Lord Curzon, a great traveler, a 
distinguished ex- Viceroy of India, and a man of academic 
distinction. These are all men whose opinion is of real im- 
portance, and who probably ought to be members of any 
second chamber, however democratically constructed. Then 
there are a number of successful business men, brewers, doc- 
tors, and men of science. 

The House of Lords on ordinary days is not at all an un- 
satisfactory senate. An old friend of the writer, a Liberal 
of undoubted soundness and an enthusiastic admirer of 
Abraham Lincoln, avers that on ordinary occasions, where 
no great party question is at issue, he finds the debates in the 
House of Lords better than those which he remembers in the 
Commons. Above all there is more freedom, and more power 
of expressing unpopular views. When certain Quakers and 
other Conscientious Objectors to military service were shown 
to have been harshly or unfairly treated, the best statement 
of their case was made in the House of Lords. When the 
Government, by way of "reprisals" against German cruelty, 
sent an expedition to drop bombs on the open town of Frei- 
burg, by far the best and most effective protest was made in 
the House of Lords — and made by Liberals, Bishops, and 
Conservatives alike. Again when abstruse questions affect- 
ing remote parts of the world come up for debate, there are 
generally some peers present who have special knowledge 



igo IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

of them. Only those peers attend who are really interested 
in public affairs; there is no obstruction or "filibustering/' 
no "talking out" of proposals, no threats by party leaders 
against their too independent followers. There is just the one 
absolutely fatal defect, that, whenever the Conservative 
leader thinks fit to take the trouble, he can whip up an over- 
whelming majority to destroy any Liberal bill; and that 
majority will consist largely of quite undistinguished and un- 
political persons, some few of them perhaps of indifferent 
character and intelligence, and most of them not known to 
him by sight. 

It is England all over, this anomalous and indefensible 
institution, which generally happens to work rather well be- 
cause most of its members do not attend, and has not — until 
lately — made itself so serious an obstacle to progress and the 
popular will that the nation was willing to take the trouble of 
"ending or mending it." However, reform is now inevitable. 
The only question is whether the House of Lords itself will 
consent to a reform sufficiently thorough to satisfy the feeling 
of the country, or whether it prefers to follow the counsel of 
its own "Die-hards" and "Last-ditchers," and will go down 
righting. It will no longer be a grave obstacle to the progress 
of democracy. That may be taken as certain. 

If you consulted at this moment the feeling of radical and 
socialist circles in Great Britain, you would probably find 
comparatively little bitterness against the House of Lords; 
rather the reverse. It has proved itself the one place where 
the unpopular views of the pacifists can be fully expressed and 
accorded a courteous hearing. The real object of bitterness 
would be the pseudo-democratic capitalist press — which is 
quite another story. 

"This is all very well," an American reader may say. "It 
may be that your King has no political power and your 
House of Lords is having its claws clipped at the moment, 
so far as the poor things needed clipping. But you are an 



THE PALE SHADE 191 

aristocratic nation. We know it in our bones. We feel it when 
we meet Englishmen. The first thing they ask about a man is 
whether he is or is not a 'gentleman,' — it is the all-impor- 
tant question. And the answer to it seems to depend neither 
on the man's moral qualities, which we would respect, nor on 
the size of his income, which we could at least understand, 
but on the abstruse points connected with his pronunciation, 
and his relatives, and the way he wears his necktie. Your 
aristocrats are supposed to have exquisite manners, but as a 
matter of fact they often offend us. They are too much 
accustomed to deference from common people; they stand 
aside and expect to be waited on. And, when we go to England, 
we may not see as much gross luxury as in New York or New- 
port, but we do see that life is made extraordinarily comfort- 
able for the 'upper classes,' and for them alone. They do no 
doubt care about the 'poor' ; they are charitable and they are 
public-spirited ; but they despise, or, at any rate, they exclude 
from their society whole classes of people who seem to us just 
as good as they are — commercial men, wealthy shop-keepers, 
leaders of industry and others, just because they have not the 
same way of talking." 

Now there is some truth in this, and some falsehood. And 
it is exceedingly difficult to unravel the two, even in the 
roughest and most elementary way. I should not dare to at- 
tempt it if I were a born Englishman, educated at Eton or 
Winchester. Because in that case, I believe I should think it 
mere nonsense. But, having come to England from Australia, 
and been at one time a stranger to the well-to-do English 
public-school society which sets the tone in the British upper 
class, I think I can understand the criticism. 

It is a fact that in Great Britain the aristocracy, which 
America on the whole shook off when it shook off the British 
connection, still survives and is in some ways still powerful. 
And I think, perhaps, in no way more than this : that its 
standard of behavior and minor morals is more or less ac- 
cepted as a model by the whole nation. It is true that 



i 9 2 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

Englishmen, more than other nations, do consider whether a 
man is a gentleman ; and the average Englishman of all classes 
normally considers that he himself is a gentleman and expects 
to be treated as one. This may sound like mere servility or 
class-worship ; but of course it is not that. It does not mean 
that the average man tries to behave exactly as he has seen 
some earl or viscount behave, or as he reads that such persons 
did behave in the eighteenth century. It means that a certain 
ideal has been formed of the way in which a "gentleman" 
ought to behave, and that practically every self-respecting 
British citizen feels himself — theoretically at least — bound 
to live up to it. 

It is in part a class imitation and in part a genuine moral 
standard; it is based in part on snobbishness and in part 
on idealism. That is just what gives it its power. It appeals 
to every kind of person. No doubt it would be far better to 
aim at being a philosopher or a true Christian ; but thousands 
of people who have no ambition in either of those directions 
will be very strong on conducting themselves like gentlemen. 
And some will do it in a superficial way and some in a sincere 
and searching way. 

All this, as I re-read it, sounds somewhat oligarchical, 
somewhat inconsistent with the true and complete ideal of 
democracy. But the truth is that no democracy can thrive 
without a widespread and vigorous sense of self-respect and 
mutual respect among its members. And the British democ- 
racy has set about acquiring that sense by the means that 
happened for historical reasons to he ready to its hand. In 
an old aristocratic society, such as existed in the eighteenth 
century, where only the select Few were really respected, 
wider and wider circles of the nation determined to live up 
to the standard of that Few in honor and courtesy and self- 
discipline, and so to earn the respect which that standard gave. 

I do not feel ashamed when I think of it. If the standard 
were, owing to the war, to break down, as some people say 



THE PALE SHADE 193 

it will, I should be bitterly sorry, not glad. When I heard 
people attack a late Foreign Minister on the ground that he 
was "too much of a gentleman for the work that is wanted 
in war," I found it difficult within the limits of gentlemanly 
language to express the vehemence of my dissent. I will not 
for a moment plead, on behalf of my country, that she once 
had these somewhat aristocratic standards but is now throw- 
ing them over. And the majority of any working class audience 
in the country will feel as I do. 

We want to democratize the country, true, but we do not 
want to vulgarize it. Just the reverse. I remember twenty 
years ago hearing two members of Parliament discuss who 
was the truest gentleman in the House of Commons, and the 
choice fell on a Northumberland miner, sent by his fellow 
miners to represent them. It is not from the working classes 
that any danger to this ideal will come. Money and intrigue 
and insincerity and lying advertisement: those are the ene- 
mies to true " gentleness," not hard work nor poverty. 

We are no doubt still affected by the tradition of the aris- 
tocracy which once governed Great Britain, a tradition al- 
ready made legendary and greatly idealized. The class of 
gentlefolk has enormously widened and no man living is 
necessarily shut out from it. It still largely fills the civil serv- 
ice and governs the outlying portions of the empire. The 
public services are now, with few exceptions, filled by open 
competitive examination. The examinations are severe and 
skillful, and their fairness has never been questioned. If the 
services still remain somewhat select and aristocratic, that is 
because the higher education has in Great Britain, as in all 
industrial societies, remained too much a privilege of the 
upper and middle classes. We must not forget the immense 
and steady effort made to counteract this tendency from the 
Renaissance onwards. No nation has had such rich provision 
for the education of "poor scholars" as England had after 
the foundation of the great public schools. No nation has such 
a system of "scholarships," or large money prizes lasting for 



i 9 4 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

four years or so, and open to the best pupils in competitive 
examinations in all parts of the country. The present writer 
was supported almost entirely by scholarships from the age 
of fourteen to the age of twenty-three, and could not have got 
through the University otherwise. So it is not for him to com- 
plain of the exclusion of poor boys from the highest education 
that England can provide. And his case is perfectly normal 
and common. If you look through the lists of "scholars" and 
" exhibitioners " compiled by several Oxford colleges of recent 
years, you will find a majority coming from homes by no means 
wealthy and a large proportion actually from the working 
class. And these men go on to fill high positions in the civil 
service, politics, the law, the Church, or other "gentlemanly" 
professions. And if this was done under the old system with 
its "great Public Schools," with high fees, numbering less 
than a hundred all told, how much more will be done when the 
new State-aided Secondary Schools, numbering over nine 
hundred already, with very low fees and an abundance of free 
places and university scholarships, have begun to exert their 
full influence in the national education? Of course we must 
not delude ourselves. It remains difficult, by any measures 
of public help, entirely to get over the inherent disadvantages 
to a working-class child of the poverty of its parents. They 
will want it to bring in wages at once instead of improving 
its education. They will not be able to provide it at home with 
a background of cultured thought or interesting conversation. 
However, we see those difficulties and we mean to face them. 
I must not allow them now to make me digress from my main 
subject. . . . Hitherto the public services and learned pro- 
fessions, the original preserves of the "upper classes," have 
absorbed without any loss of standard, indeed with a consider- 
able rise in standard, the hundreds of "poor scholars" who 
came to them from the old Public Schools and Universities. 
They will absorb equally the thousands of chosen boys and 
girls who come from the new Secondary Schools and the cheap 
modern Universities. 



THE PALE SHADE 195 

I have spoken of the civil side of life, since that is the only 
side of which I have personal knowledge. The army and navy 
used to be the great strongholds of aristocratic privilege, the 
impregnable fortresses of anti-liberal thought. The famous 
phrase quoted at the head of this essay has lingered in men's 
memories. But it is well to remember that it referred to the 
Engand of 181 2, and even then only to the army. The army 
of 191 7 is very different from the army of a hundred years ago, 
or even of three years ago. The soldier in whom the nation 
now places its chief trust, Sir William Robertson, was himself 
a working man. Promotions from the ranks are now the rule, 
not the exception. I make no profession of knowing the army 
from inside; but I believe one is safe in saying that if the 
nation as a whole is moving forward in a democratic direc- 
tion, the opposite tendency will find no stronghold any longer 
in the army. The British soldier fights no more "in the pale 
shade of aristocracy. " 

Yet the standard of honor remains untouched. War makes 
good men do horrible things ; there is no shutting of the eyes to 
that. Yet I believe all good judges will agree that our soldiers 
now have more chivalry, not less, than those of Wellington. 

There are bad symptoms here and there : vulgarities, 
meannesses, intrigues, and blatancies. Such things exist in 
every large society, and a state of long and desperate warfare 
calls them into prominence. But, on the whole, there is no 
visible decay in the strength of that ideal of manners which 
is descended originally from a bygone aristocracy but is 
now felt to be part of the birthright of every free Briton : an 
obligation imposed on him by his own freedom and by the 
position which his race holds in the world. How can a mem- 
ber of so great a Commonwealth consent to be anything but 
a Gentleman? A rule of duty as of the strong towards the 
weak, courage and gentleness, no bullying and no intrigue: 
it may be based ultimately on mere pride, but it is better to 
be proud of these qualities than of their opposites. And such 
pride, as America herself is the best witness, is no bad orna- 
ment to a great and sovereign democracy. 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 1 
Jan Christian Smuts 

[Lieutenant-General Smuts (1870- ) is a native of South Africa, but 
was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he distinguished him- 
self as a scholar. In the Boer War of 1 899-1 902 he fought against the Brit- 
ish, but in the World War he commanded the British troops which drove 
the Germans out of East Africa. During 191 7 he visited England as South 
African representative in the Imperial War Cabinet, and his speeches on 
the war and the question of Imperial federation made a profound impres- 
sion. This after-dinner speech was delivered at a banquet given in 
his honor by members of both Houses of Parliament on May 15, 19 17, 
and was characterized by the London Daily Telegraph as "one of the 
finest and most statesmanlike utterances that the war has produced." 
It is especially valuable for its presentation before a not entirely sym- 
pathetic audience of the attitude of the British "colonials" to the British 
Crown and Constitution.] 

Ever since I have come to this country, about two months 
ago, I have received nothing but the most profound and charm- 
ing kindness and hospitality, which has culminated in this 
unique banquet to-night. I appreciate it all the more because 
I know it is given at a time when the greatest storm in the 
world's history is raging, and when nobody in this country 
or great city feels inclined to indulge in any festivities or 
banquets. When I return home, I shall be able to tell the 
people of South Africa that I have been received by you not 
as a guest, not as a stranger, but simply as one of yourselves. 
Speaking with a somewhat different accent, and laying a dif- 
ferent emphasis on many things, as no doubt becomes a bar- 
barian from the outer marches of the Empire — and one 
whose mind is not yet deeply furrowed with trenches and 
dugouts — I would like first of all to say how profoundly 

1 From International Conciliation, November, 191 7. Reprinted by permission. 

196 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 197 

thankful I am to Lord French for the words which have fallen 
from his lips. Your expressions in regard to myself are largely, 
I feel, undeserved. At any rate, I accept them as coming 
from an old opponent and comrade in arms. I know they are 
meant in the best spirit, and I accept them as such. 

Your words recall to my mind many an incident of those 
stirring times when we were opposing commanders in the 
Boer War. I may refer to two. On one occasion I was sur- 
rounded by Lord French — and was practically face to face 
with disaster. Nothing was left me but, by the most diligent 
scouting, to find a way out. I ventured into a place which 
bore the very appropriate name of Murderers' Gap — and I 
was the only man who came out alive. One account of that 
stated that one Boer escaped, but he probably had so many 
bullets in him that he would be no further danger. I survived 
to be your guest to-night. Two days after I broke through — 
blessed words in these times — and on a very dark night, I 
came to a railway, which I was just on the point of crossing, 
when we heard a train. Some of us felt inclined to wreck and 
capture that train, but for some reason or other I said, "No, 
let it pass." You can imagine my feelings when some time 
afterwards I learned that the only freight on that train was 
Sir John French with one or two A.D.C.'s, moving round from 
one part of his front to another to find out how I had broken 
through. If I had not missed that chance, he would have been 
my guest, no doubt very welcome, though no doubt embar- 
rassing. Fate has willed otherwise. I am his guest. 

Those were very difficult and strenuous days in which one 
learned many a valuable lesson, good for all life. One of those 
lessons was that under stress of great difficulty practically 
everything breaks down ultimately, and the only things that 
survive are really the simple human feelings of loyalty and 
comradeship to your fellows, and patriotism which can stand 
any strain and bear you through all difficulty and privation. 
We soldiers know the extraordinary value of these simple 
feelings, how far they go, and what strain they can bear, and 



iqS IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

how ultimately they support the whole weight of civilization. 
That war was carried on by both sides in a sportsmanlike 
spirit, and in a clean, chivalrous way — and out of that 
calamity has been produced the happy state of affairs that 
you see to-day in South Africa, and which led to a new basis 
on which to build the larger and happier South Africa which 
is arising to-day. 

I am sure in the present great struggle now being waged you 
will see some cause leading to lasting results. Here you have 
from all parts of the British Empire young men gathering 
on the battle fields of Europe, and whilst your statesmen keep 
planning a great scheme of union for the future of the Empire, 
my feeling is that very largely the work is already done. The 
spirit of comradeship has been borne in this campaign on the 
battle fields of Europe, and many of the men from the various 
parts of the Empire will be far more powerful than any in- 
strument of government that you can elect in the future. I 
feel sure that in after days, when our successors come to sum 
up what has happened and draw up a balance-sheet, there 
will be a good credit balance due to this common feeling of 
comradeship which will have been built up. Now once more, 
as many ages ago during the Roman Empire, the Germanic 
volcano is in eruption, and the whole world is shaking. No 
doubt in this great evolution you are faced in this country 
with the most difficult and enormous problems which any 
Government or people have ever been called upon to face — 
problems of world-wide strategy, of man-power, communica- 
tions, food supply, of every imaginable kind and magnitude, 
so large that it is almost beyond the wit of man to solve them, 
and it is intelligible that where you have so many difficulties 
to face, one forgets to keep before one's eye the situation as a 
whole. And yet that is very necessary. 

It is most essential that even in this bitter struggle, even 
when Europe is looming so large before our eyes, we should 
keep before us the whole situation. We should see it steadily 
and see it whole. I would ask you not to forget in these times 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 199 

the British Commonwealth of nations. Do not forget that 
larger world which is made up of all the nations that belong 
to the Empire. Bear in mind that after all Europe is not so 
large, and will not always continue to loom so large as at 
present. Even now in the struggle the pace of Europe is being 
permanently slowed down. Your Empire is spread all over the 
world, and even where the pace is slowed down in one portion 
it is accelerated in another, and you have to keep the whole 
before you in order to judge fairly and sanely of the factors 
which affect the whole. 

I wish to say a few words to-night on this subject, because 
I think there is a tendency sometimes to forget certain aspects 
of the great questions with which we are now confronted. 
That is one of the reasons why I am glad the Imperial Con- 
ference was called at this time, apparently a very opportune 
moment, and yet the calling of this Conference at this time 
has already directed attention once more to that other aspect 
of the whole situation which is so important to us. Remember, 
it is not only Europe that we have to consider, but also the 
future of this great commonwealth to which we all belong. 
It is peculiarly situated ; it is scattered over the whole world ; 
it is not a compact territory ; it is dependent for its very ex- 
istence on world-wide communications, which must be main- 
tained or this Empire goes to pieces. In the past thirty years 
you see what has happened. Everywhere upon your communi- 
cations Germany has settled down; everywhere upon the 
communications of the whole globe you will find a German 
colony here and there, and the day would have come when 
your Empire would have been in very great jeopardy from 
your lines of communication being cut. 

Now, one of the by-products of this war has been that the 
whole world outside Europe has been cleared of the enemy. 
Germany has been swept from the seas, and from all continents 
except Central Europe. Whilst Germany has been gaining 
ground in Central Europe, from the rest of the world she 
has been swept clean; and, therefore, you are now in this 



200 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

position — almost providentially brought to this position 
— that once more you can consider the problem of your future 
as a whole. When peace comes to be made you have all these 
parts in your hand, and you can go carefully into the question 
of what is necessary for your future security and your future 
safety as an Empire, and you can say, so far as it is possible 
under war circumstances, what you are going to keep and what 
you are going to give away. 

That is a very important precedent. I hope when the time 
comes — I am speaking for myself, and expressing nobody's 
opinion but my own — I feel when the time comes for peace 
we should not bear only Central Europe in mind, but the whole 
British Empire. As far as we are concerned, we do not wish 
this war to have been fought in vain. We have not fought for 
material gain, or for territory; we have fought for security 
in the future. If we attach any value to this group of nations 
which compose the British Empire, then we, in settling peace, 
will have to look carefully at our future safety and security, 
and I hope that will be done, and that no arrangement will be 
made which will jeopardize the very valuable and lasting 
results which have been attained. 

"That is the geographical question. There remains the other 
question — a very difficult question — of the future consti- 
tutional relations and readjustments in the British Empire. 
At a luncheon given recently by the Empire Parliamentary 
Association I said, rather cryptically, that I did not think 
this was a matter in which we should follow precedents, and 
I hope you will bear with me if I say a few words on that theme, 
and develop more fully what I meant. I think we are inclined 
to make mistakes in thinking about this group of nations to 
which we belong, because too often we think of it merely as 
one State. The British Empire is much more than a State. 
I think the very expression " Empire" is misleading, because 
it makes people think as if we are one single entity, one unity, 
to which that term "Empire" can be applied. We are not an 
Empire. Germany is an Empire, so was Rome, and so is India, 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 201 

but we are a system of nations, a community of states and of 
nations far greater than any empire which has ever existed ; 
and by using this ancient expression we really obscure the real 
fact that we are larger and that our whole position is different, 
and that we are not one nation, or state, or empire, but we 
are a whole world by ourselves, consisting of many nations 
and states, and all sorts of communities under one flag. We 
are a system of states, not only a static system, a stationary 
system, but a dynamic system, growing, evolving all the time 
towards new destinies. 

Here you have a kingdom with a number of Crown colonies ; 
besides that you have large protectorates like Egypt, which 
is an empire in itself, which was one of the greatest empires 
in the world. Besides that you have great dependencies like 
India — an empire in itself, one of the oldest civilizations in 
the world, and we are busy there trying to see how East and 
West can work together, how the forces that have kept the 
East going can be worked in conjunction with the ideas we 
have evolved in Western civilization for enormous problems 
within that State. But beyond that we come to the so-called 
Dominions, a number of nations and states almost sovereign, 
almost independent, who govern themselves, who have been 
evolved on the principles of your constitutional system, now 
almost independent states, and who all belong to this group, 
to this community of nations, which I prefer to call the British 
Commonwealth of nations. Now, you see that no political 
ideas that we evolved in the past, no nomenclature will apply 
to this world which is comprised in the British Empire ; any 
expression, any name which we have found so far for this 
group has been insufficient, and I think the man who would 
discover the real appropriate name for this vast system of 
entities would be doing a great service not only to this country, 
but to constitutional theory. 

The question is, how are you going to provide for the future 
government of this group of nations? It is an entirely new 
problem. If you want to see how great it is, you must take the 



2 o2 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

United States in comparison. There you find what is essential 
— one nation, not perhaps in the fullest sense, but more and 
more growing into one; one big State, consisting of subor- 
dinate parts, but whatever the nomenclature of the United 
States Constitution, you have one national State, over one 
big, contiguous area. That is the problem presented by the 
United States, and for which they discovered this federal solu- 
tion, which means subordinate governments for the subordinate 
parts, but one national Federal Parliament for the whole. 

Compare with that state of facts this enormous system com- 
prised in the British Empire of nations all over the world, 
some independent, living under diverse conditions, and all 
growing towards greater nations than they are at present. 
You can see at once that the solution which has been found 
practicable in the case of the United States probably never 
will work under our system. That is what I feel in all the 
empires of the past, and even in the United States — the 
effort has been towards forming one nation. All the empires 
that we have known in the past and that exist to-day are 
founded on the idea of assimilation, of trying to force different 
human material through one mold so as to form one nation. 
Your whole idea and basis is entirely different. You do not 
want to standardize the nations of the British Empire. You 
want to develop them into greater nationhood. These younger 
communities, the offspring of the Mother Country, or terri- 
tories like that of my own people, which have been annexed 
after various vicissitudes of war — all these you want not to 
mold on any common pattern, but you want them to de- 
velop according to the principles of self-government and free- 
dom and liberty. Therefore, your whole basic idea is different 
from anything that has ever existed before, either in the em- 
pires of the past or even in the United States. 

I think that this is the fundamental fact which we have to 
bear in mind — that the British Empire, or this British Com- 
monwealth of nations, does not stand for unity, standardiza- 
tion, or assimilation, or denationalization ; but it stands for 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 203 

a fuller, a richer, and more various life among all the nations 
that compose it. And even nations who have fought against 
you, like my own, must feel that they and their interests, 
their language, their religions, and all their cultural interests 
are as safe and as secure under the British flag as those of the 
children of your household and your own blood. It is only in 
proportion as that is realized that you will fulfill the true 
mission which you have undertaken. Therefore, it seems, 
speaking my own individual opinion, that there is only one 
solution, that is the solution supplied by our past traditions 
of freedom, self-government, and the fullest development. 
We are not going to force common Governments, federal or 
otherwise, but we are going to extend liberty, freedom, and 
nationhood more and more in every part of the Empire. 

The question arises, how are you going to keep this world 
together if there is going to be all this enormous development 
towards a more varied and richer life among all its parts? 
It seems to me that you have two potent factors that you must 
rely on for the future. The first is your hereditary kingship. 
I have seen some speculations recently in the papers of this 
country upon the position of the kingship of this country ; 
speculations by people who, I am sure, have never thought 
of the wider issues that are at stake. You cannot make a Re- 
public in this country. You cannot make a Republic of the 
British Commonwealth of nations, because if you have to 
elect a President not only in these Islands, but all over the 
British Empire, who will be the ruler and representative of 
all these peoples, you are facing an absolutely insoluble prob- 
lem. Now, you know the theory of our Constitution is that 
the King is not merely your King, but he is the King of all of 
us. He represents every part of the whole Commonwealth 
of nations. If his place is to be taken by anybody else, then 
that somebody will have to be elected by a process which, I 
think, will pass the wit of man to devise. Therefore let us be 
thankful for the mercies we have. We have a kingship here 
which is really not very different from a hereditary Republic, 



204 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

and I am sure that more and more in the future the trend 
will be in that direction, and I shall not be surprised to see 
the time when our Royal princes, instead of getting their Con- 
sorts among the princelings of Central Europe, will go to the 
Dominions and the outlying portions of the Empire. 

I think that in the theory of the future of this great Empire 
it is impossible to attach too much importance to this institu- 
tion which we have existing, and which can be developed, in 
my opinion, to the greatest uses possible for its future preser- 
vation and development. It will, of course, be necessary to 
go further than that. It is not only the symbol of unity which 
you have in the Royal ruler, but you will have to develop 
further common institutions. 

Every one admits that it would be necessary to devise better 
machinery for common consultation than we have had hitherto. 
So far we have relied upon the Imperial Conference which 
meets every four years, and which, however useful for the 
work it has done hitherto, has not, in my opinion, been a 
complete success. It will be necessary to devise better means 
for achieving our ends. A certain precedent has been laid 
down of calling the Prime Ministers and representatives from 
the Empire of India to the Imperial Cabinet, and we have 
seen the statement made by Lord Curzon that it is the inten- 
tion of the Government to perpetuate that practice in future. 
Although we have not yet the details of the scheme, and we 
have to wait for a complete exposition of the subject from his 
Majesty's Government, yet it is clear that in an institution 
like that you have a far better instrument of common con- 
sultation than you have in the old Imperial Conference, which 
was called only every four years, and which discussed a num- 
ber of subjects which were not really of first-rate importance. 
After all, what you want is to call together the most impor- 
tant statesmen in the Empire from time to time — say once 
a year, or as often as may be found necessary — to discuss 
matters which concern all parts of the Empire in common, 
and in order that causes of friction and misunderstanding 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 205 

may be removed. A common policy should be laid down to 
determine the true orientation of our Imperial policy. 

Take foreign policy, for instance, on which the fate of the 
Empire may from time to time depend. I think it is highly 
desirable that at least once a year the most important leaders 
of the Empire should be called together to discuss these mat- 
ters, and to determine a common policy, which would then 
be carried out in detail by the various executive Governments 
of the commonwealth nations. This Imperial Council or 
Cabinet will not themselves exercise executive functions, 
but they will lay down the policy which will be carried out by 
the Governments of the various parts of the Empire. A sys- 
tem like that, although it looks small, must in the end lead to 
very important results and very great changes. You cannot 
settle a common policy for the whole of the British Empire 
without changing that policy very considerably from what it 
has been in the past, because the policy will have to be, for 
one thing, far simpler. We do not understand diplomatic 
finesse in other parts of the Empire. We go by large principles, 
and things which can be easily understood by our undeveloped 
democracies. If your foreign policy is going to rest, not only 
on the basis of your Cabinet here, but finally on the whole 
of the British Empire, it will have to be a simpler and more 
intelligible policy, which will, I am sure, lead in the end to 
less friction, and the greater safety of the Empire. 

Of course, no one will ever dispute the primacy of the Im- 
perial Government in these matters. Whatever changes and 
developments come about, we shall always look upon the 
British Government as the senior partner in this concern. 
When this Council is not sitting, the Imperial Government 
will conduct the foreign affairs of the Empire. But it will 
always be subject to the principles and policy which have 
been laid down in these common conferences from time to 
time, and which, I think, will be a simpler and probably, in 
the long run, a saner and safer policy for the Empire as a whole. 
Naturally, it will lead to greater publicity. There is no doubt 



206 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

that, after the catastrophe that has overtaken Europe, nations 
in future will want to know more about the way their affairs 
are conducted. And you can understand that, once it is no 
longer an affair of one Government, but of a large number of 
Governments who are responsible ultimately to their Parlia- 
ments for the action they have taken, you may be sure there 
will be a great deal more publicity and discussion of foreign 
affairs than there has ever been. 

I am sure that the after effects of a change like this, although 
it looks a simple change, are going to be very important, not 
only for this community of nations, but for the world as a 
whole. Far too much stress is laid upon the instruments of 
government. People are inclined to forget that the world is 
getting more democratic, and that forces which find expres- 
sion in public opinion are going to be far more powerful in 
the future than they have been in the past. You will find that 
you have built up a spirit of comradeship and a common 
feeling of patriotism, and that the instrument of government 
will not be the thing that matters so much as the spirit that 
actuates the whole system of all its parts. That seems to me 
to be your mission. You talk about an Imperial mission. It 
seems to me this British Empire has only one mission, and 
that is a mission for greater liberty and freedom and self-de- 
velopment. Yours is the only system that has ever worked 
in history where a large number of nations have been living 
in unity. Talk about the League of Nations — you are the 
only league of nations that has ever existed ; and if the line 
that I am sketching here is correct, you are going to be an 
even greater league of nations in the future ; and if you are 
true to your old traditions of self-government and freedom, 
and to this vision of your future and your mission, who knows 
that you may not exercise far greater and more beneficent 
influence on the history of mankind than you have ever 
done before ? 

In the welter of confusion which is probably going to follow 
the war in Europe, you will stand as the one system where 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 207 

liberty to work successfully has kept together divers com- 
munities. You may be sure the world such as will be sur- 
rounding you in the times that are coming will be very likely 
to follow your example. You may become the real nucleus 
for the world government for the future. There is no doubt 
that is the way things will go in the future. You have made a 
successful start ; and if you keep on the right track, your 
Empire will be a solution of the whole problem. 

I hope I have given no offense. When I look around this 
brilliant gathering, and see before me the most important men 
in the Government of the United Kingdom, I am rather 
anxious that we should discuss this matter, which concerns 
our future so very vitally — a matter which should never be 
forgotten even in this awful struggle, in which all our energies 
are engaged. Memories of the past keep crowding in upon me. 
I think of all the difficulties which have surrounded us in the 
past, and I am truly filled with gratitude for the reception 
which you have given me, and with gratitude to Time, the 
great and merciful judge, which has healed many wounds — 
and gratitude to that Divinity which " shapes our ends, rough 
hew them how we will." I think of the difficulties that still 
lie ahead of us, which are going to test all the nations fighting 
for liberty far more than they have ever been tested in the 
past, and I hope and pray that they all may have clearness of 
vision and purpose, and especially that strength of soul in 
the coming days, which will be more necessary than strength 
of arm. I verily believe that we are within reach of priceless 
and immeasurable good, not only for this United Kingdom 
and group of nations to which we belong, but also for the whole 
world. But, of course, it will depend largely upon us whether 
the great prize is achieved now in this struggle, or whether 
the world will be doomed to long, weary waiting in the future. 
The prize is within our grasp, if we have strength, especially 
the strength of soul, which I hope we shall have, to see this 
thing through without getting tired of waiting until victory 
crowns the efforts of our brave men in the field. 



THE IDEA OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE 1 

Emile Boutroux 

[Etienne Emile Marie Boutroux (1845- ) is a professor of phi- 
losophy in the University of Paris and is one of the most distinguished of 
French philosophers. He has been an Exchange Professor at Harvard 
University, and was in 191 2 elected to the French Academy. He has 
written, among other works, "Education and Ethics" (1913) and lives 
of Pascal and of William James. This is part of an address delivered on 
December 5, 191 5, before the Conference de Foi et Vie in Paris. In its 
presentation of the double origin of the French ideal of government and 
attitude toward life and the perfect combination of the two tendencies, 
it is a valuable contribution to an understanding of European principles 
of government.] 

The French idea of liberty is not a modern invention. It 
is the blossoming of a double tradition : the Graeco-Roman 
and the Christian. 

Opposed to the Orient, which subjected man and the world 
to an absolute empire of transcendent powers and indeter- 
minable fatalities, ancient Greece considered the world to 
be self -animated, and as tending to realize its own destinies 
within itself. The directing ideal of Greek thought is Art. 
Now, in a work of art such as the Greeks conceived it, matter 
and form are so exactly adjusted to one another, that one is 
unable to say whether form is the result of the spontaneous 
development of matter, or whether matter has been purely 
and simply disciplined by form. In the eyes of the Greek 
artist matter and form are one. It is neither a foreign force 
nor an oppressive one which develops matter under the laws 
of form. According to the voice of Amphion's lyre there arise, 

1 Translated by Morris Edmund Speare from "L'IdSe de Liberte en France 
et en Allemagne." Paris, 1915. 

208 



THE IDEA OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE 209 

of their own accord, pliable materials which develop into walls 
and towers. The great blind man of Mceonie x opens his mouth. 
". . . and the ancient boughs already 
Incline their foliage softly and in cadence !" 

If nature in general possesses, within itself, the power of 
elevating itself toward the ideal, by a much stronger reason 
is human nature capable of manifesting the attributes of the 
true, the beautiful, and the good, and of its own accord press- 
ing toward them. When he loves and seeks for knowledge, 
man thus constitutes morality, convention, the social life, 
and the political life. From thence springs the Hellenic ideal 
of education. To uplift men is not, according to the Platonists 
and the Aristotelians, to impose upon them any plan which 
one might judge useful, without taking into consideration 
their natures and their aspirations ; it is, on the contrary, to 
consummate their most intimate wishes, to help them to reach 
the goal which they themselves aim for. Art, says Aristotle, 
makes masterpieces with which Nature should be content. 
It is so with Education, which is the supreme art. 

If Greece, above all other things, put forth the power of 
initiative and of perfection which reside in the nature of man, 
the more peculiarly practical genius of Rome expressly de- 
duced from this notion of man the moral and the juridical 
consequences which it embodied. Capable of self-mastery 
and of reflecting upon his own acts man is subjected to the 
law of Duty. He is not only a plant which blossoms through 
liberty. He is a will which must obey. And, capable of as- 
suming dignity and moral worth, he possesses as an essential 
attribute that eminent quality which we call Right. 

As the Grasco-Latin civilization conceives him, man is 
thus a being capable of personally fashioning himself, of 
aspiring to the true, the beautiful, and the good, subject to 
the higher laws which impose upon him duties, and he is 
provided with essential rights which are born out of this very 
dignity of his. 

1 Andr6 Chenier, UAveugle. 



210 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

If French thought comes out of this so-called Classical 
tradition, it is also heir to the Christian tradition. The latter 
does not contradict the classical ideal at all. But, while the 
Greeks and the Romans had considered above all things 
Reason in man, reason through which all men tend to mold 
themselves into a single being, universal and impersonal, 
Christianity exalted, in particular, the individual, with his 
conscience and with his own traits of character. It gives first 
importance, in God and in man, to love, sentiment, — that is 
to say, to the peculiarly individualistic element of the soul. 
It is not simply the human species which, according to the 
doctrine of Christ, is privileged to approach God and to 
commune with him ; it is every man taken separately, however 
humble his condition and however limited his vision. " Be- 
hold," says Jesus, "this poor widow casting thither, into the 
alms-box, her two mites. Of a truth I say unto you that she 
hath cast in more than they all. For they have cast of their 
abundance ; but she of her penury hath cast in all the living 
that she had." Such are the examples that Jesus gave to his 
disciples ; such are the servants of God to whom He promises 
the first places in the Kingdom of Heaven. Every individual, 
according to this doctrine, is called upon as such to save him- 
self from sin and from death, and to live in God. And the sal- 
vation of all, taken every single one, is equally dear to the 
Father who is all-powerful and all-good. 

Nourished upon this twofold tradition, French thought 
has affirmed an jdeal of liberty which is vitally identical in 
the conscience of the people and in the writings and speeches 
of scholars and statesmen. 

Liberty, according to this way of looking at things, implies 
a power of disposing of oneself, of desiring, of thinking, of 
acting for oneself which belong to the individual as an in- 
dividual. This power is expressed by the phrase : free agent, 
which, according to the French point of view, designates a 
faculty at the same time very genuine and very superior. 



THE IDEA OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE 211 

Each man, through this free agent, is like a personal empire 
within a universal empire. His very conscience, in fact, is 
not an insignificant secondary phenomenon, but an original 
and efficacious reality. Through it each individual is somehow 
master of himself. Not that the individual is sufficient unto 
himself nor has the right to regard himself as superior to all 
laws. French thought does not ratify the exaggerated asser- 
tion of Rousseau attributing to the individual "an absolute 
existence and a naturally independent one." Man finds in 
his own conscience with irresistible clearness the laws of 
justice and of humanity. He considers himself therefore as 
under obligation to his kind and to the universal order of 
things. The aim which he should impose upon himself is, in 
this sense, not to differentiate between an absolute individual 
sovereignty and an absolute abdication, but to conciliate 
within himself the liberty and the right of the individual 
with the right of the ideal and the sovereignty of moral laws. 
If every individual is, by some means, an entire being, it is 
perforce an entire being that individuals ought to consum- 
mate by their union. So that the problem of moral life for 
French conscience is the very problem which a Greek poet 
put forth in these words 

IIa>S Se fXOL Iv TL TOL TTOVT €OT<U 

koI ^wets enaarov; 

"How can we so bring it about that the All be One, and at 
the same time that each member possess an individual ex- 
istence?" 

The conception of liberty in the individual is, according to 
the French doctrine, determined by nations, in the measure 
that these latter can be held responsible as you would hold 
people responsible ; that is to say, in the measure with which 
they are endowed with a national conscience and possess the 
necessary elements for self-government. They also belong to 
themselves, and must be masters of their own destinies ; they 
also, at the same time, must recognize the existence of a 



212 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

universal justice for the realization of which they are in duty 
bound to collaborate with all the others. 

One cannot deny that in the course of our own history this 
idea of liberty has not, at times, changed, and has not, some- 
times, failed to suffer destruction while working out its own 
salvation. It is evident that in teaching men that they have a 
personal worth, that they are capable and worthy of personally 
determining themselves and of governing themselves, we 
expose them to forgetting that they are dependent upon a 
superior authority and so to take themselves as if they were 
in themselves the ultimate end of action. It would be more 
simple, surely, to mold' them to the necessary obedience ; 
to inculcate in them that belief that of themselves they are 
nothing, and that they acquire a value and a reality only in 
acting under the impulse of a higher power. Hence the French 
conception of liberty has fallen in certain crises, a fact which 
has endangered the social order and liberty itself. Ill-willed 
critics have been able to say that France oscillated between 
despotism and anarchy. And it is fashionable, notably beyond 
the Rhine, to maintain that the French are vowed to an un- 
governable individualism. The individual, according to this 
opinion, would consider himself in France as literally sover- 
eign. In the satisfaction of his own wishes, his desires, his 
caprices, he would place the only law for his conduct. He 
would recognize in his governors no other role, no other right, 
than that of assuring, of guaranteeing to each person the 
integral development of his individuality. 

That those who have thus estimated France are mistaken 
is what the attitude of the French people in the present war 
shows most forcibly. Certainly every one is his very self, 
every one acts according to the dictates of his own conscience. 
Does it follow that France is given over to anarchy ; that the 
revolution or the civil war which its enemies foresaw are 
ready to open up our country ; that its unity is only super- 
ficial and illusory ? There can be nothing more false than such 
a deduction. The unanimity of these free minds is real. This 



THE IDEA OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE 213 

war, more than any other perhaps, is a national war for the 
people of France. It is for this reason that the general will is 
now more united than ever before. We distinguish no longer 
between the soldiers of the regular army, the reserves, or the 
territorials, between the civilian and the military, between 
the army and the nation. All offer themselves for the common 
cause, each according to the place which he occupies or which 
is assigned to him. A single thought fills all hearts : to free 
the country, Europe, and the world, and to establish the rule 
of Right among the nations. One dominating ideal pervades 
all our action, great or small : the good of the service. Before 
this necessity personal pride disappears. Politics itself, in 
fact, bows before the national duty. The country has re- 
solved in its entirety and to the limit to perform valiantly all 
the physical and the moral sacrifices which patriotism demands 
of it. 

What does that mean? Has France become transformed, 
or resuscitated, or galvanized ? 

France is to-day what she was yesterday ; but the frightful 
danger with which she saw herself menaced has now spared 
her the necessity of coordinating, of combining, and of leading 
back to unity the individual liberties, if those liberties were 
to have efficacious action. To find principles capable of thus 
disciplining liberties, without doing them any violence, France 
has only to study its own conscience. She found there pro- 
foundly rooted sentiments of a sovereign grandeur and potency. 
The first is worship of the Past. There resides in every French- 
man the love of the soil where his ancestors repose, and of the 
monuments which betoken their piety, their glories, and their 
genius. The second is that love of Justice and of ideal humanity 
which, no less than the reverence for the Past, is traditional 
in the country of France. 

If the present war has especially recalled Frenchmen to 
the duty of subjecting their individual wills to a higher Law, 
it has, by that challenge, simply excited them to develop 
harmoniously all their instincts. Man, says Descartes, is 



214 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

naturally endowed with free will. But free will is, itself, only 
a faculty of which one may make bad use as well as good 
use. The destiny of free will is to become Liberty. Free will 
attains that dignity only when it spends itself in realizing, 
not any kind of end at all but those alone which dictate 
or admit Reason. 



A CLUE TO RUSSIA 1 

H. N. Brailsford 

[Henry Noel Brailsford (1873- ) is an English political writer and 
journalist who is identified with the Liberal Party. He has made several 
visits to the Near East, in 191 3 serving on the Carnegie International 
Commission sent there. His chief writings are "Macedonia" (1906) 
and "A League of Nations" (191 7). The following article owes its value 
to its succinct explanation of an intricate matter which is at the base of 
much of the unrest in Russia.] 

About the Russian revolution one feels what Heraclitus 
felt about the nature of things. It is in continual flux, and 
any assertion which one may make about it will have ceased 
to be true as one speaks. The safest plan would be to wag a 
symbolic finger, as the wise man recommended, by way of 
indicating that "it flows." Ministries chase each other 
across the field of vision; after one congress to restore the 
nation's unity, it is safe to predict that another will be neces- 
sary in a month ; the little Cossack Korniloff, in spite of his 
pitiable failure, may not be the last of the Napoleons; and 
the Maximalists will " demonstrate " again and yet again. 
It is the way of revolutions to generate energy by explosion. 
To the steady gaze, however, the flux reveals itself as a stream 
which moves in conscious and determined currents. The 
instability and confusion at the center of power is far from 
meaning chaos; it is, on the contrary, the oscillating index 
of a struggle of tendencies as rational and inevitable as any 
clash of wills which can occur in any human society. Our 
English newspapers attribute the whole conflict to disputes 
over the conduct of the war or the promotion of peace. The 
Maximalists are for them merely traitors, bought by German 
1 From New Republic, October 20, 191 7. Reprinted by permission, 

21S 



216 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

gold, who work to make a separate peace, while Korniloff 
was the pure-minded patriot whose single purpose was to 
"get on with the war." This elegant simplification misses 
the whole point of the internal conflict. To be sure, each 
side accuses the other of working for a separate peace; the 
charge is merely a way of saying with due emphasis that one 
disagrees with a man. The root of the whole misunderstand- 
ing is that few of us realize, even yet, that there is latent in 
the revolution a social as well as a political upheaval. 

The general view was that Russia had got rid of Tsardom, 
and all that now remained for her to do was to adopt at leisure 
something resembling the French Republican constitution. 
That, to be sure, was an immense change, but the country 
seemed to be wonderfully unanimous about it. The partisans 
of Tsardom dared not show themselves, and the conservative 
elements, who would have preferred a constitutional mon- 
archy, were embarrassed by the difficulty of finding a suit- 
able dynasty. The Romanoffs, after the Rasputin scandal, 
were finally impossible, and Russia could hardly go, like 
a Balkan state, to pick up a foreign princeling in a Viennese 
cafe. The graver dispute turned on the question whether 
the republic should be a federal system, based on full auton- 
omy for such regions as Finland, the Ukraine, the Baltic 
provinces, and Siberia. That question, in spite of the prefer- 
ence of the Cadets and other Liberal-Conservatives for a 
strong centralized government, has practically settled itself. 
It became clear that these non-Russian regions must receive 
the fullest measure of home rule ; the only practical alterna- 
tive was independence. The great Russian majority had 
neither the will nor the power to coerce them. One might 
have supposed that the foundations of the future Russia 
were already laid, and that no controversy could shake them. 
Republicanism on the French pattern, federation of a loose 
and generous type, universal suffrage for all classes and both 
sexes, these were fixed by the will of the people or the pressure 
of irresistible forces. What then is the source of unrest? 



A CLUE TO RUSSIA 217 

The source of unrest is the thing which destroyed the abor- 
tive revolution of 1 905-1 906. When the first Duma met, its 
first act was to set to work to draft an ambitious scheme of 
land purchase, under the inspiration of the Cadets. Bold 
as their scheme looked to English eyes, it did not satisfy 
the Socialists, while the landed class, which included the 
officers of the army, saw in it red ruin. The result of attempt- 
ing this immense social change, before the representative 
system was consolidated or civil rights secure, was that autoc- 
racy triumphed, while the people split into three camps — 
Liberal property, Conservative property, and the half-aroused 
proletariat. The raising of the land question at that moment 
seemed a gross error in tactics, but the more one talked with 
Russians about it, the more one realized that it was inevitable. 
No revolution can succeed in Russia without peasant support, 
and the peasants will follow a revolution only when its leaders 
promise them land. The present revolution was made by 
peasants, since the revolted regiments of the Petrograd garri- 
son, whose delegates formed the Soviet (Council), were all 
composed of reservists only recently called up. The main 
body of the Socialists has been commendably willing to 
cooperate with " bourgeois" parties, but from the first there 
has been one point on which it admits no compromise. It 
stands for the abolition of private property in land. The 
Russian revolution was inspired by Socialists, and in those 
first days of fighting when the Liberals watched it inactive 
from a balcony they lost all chance of directing it. It was 
rather naive to imagine, as our English press did and still 
does, that Socialists had shed their blood merely to set up a 
Liberal republic. 

A great victory was won for democratic diplomacy, when 
M. Miliukoff fell from office as a result of his defense of the 
secret treaties. But a still more important change occurred 
during those stirring days of May. The Ministry of Agri- 
culture was confided to a Revolutionary Socialist leader, 
M. Tchernoff. His views are those of his whole party, and 



218 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

they are shared on the land question by the more cautious 
peasant " Party of Toil." M. Tchernoff set to work to draft 
a scheme of land settlement for submission to the constituent 
assembly, which in spite of postponement must some day 
meet. Its outlines became known, and M. Tchernoff was at 
once the butt of Liberal and Conservative attacks, which 
soon degenerated into personal calumny. When Kerensky 
became premier in July, the first proclamation of his govern- 
ment established as a principle the abolition of private prop- 
erty in land. 

The general idea of the Social Revolutionaries and the 
Party of Toil is to vest the ownership of land in the commune 
or parish. The Social Democrats differ only in preferring 
national to communal ownership. Each family will have the 
use of as much land as it can cultivate with its own hands, 
with its share of pasture. The average, it is reckoned, will 
be, including pasture, about thirty or thirty-five acres. The 
quantity, to English notions, seems handsome ; but Russian 
agriculture is very primitive, and the Russian family is very 
large. Forests will belong to the whole commune or to groups 
of communes. The old crown estates, the lands of the monas- 
teries, and the excessive portions of private estates are all 
to be thrown into the common stock. There will have to be 
a good deal of migration, much rearrangement of communal 
boundaries, and a bold subdivision of private estates, before 
the great settlement can be completed. Finally, and this is 
the grave feature of the scheme, it is not proposed that either 
the state or the peasant shall pay any compensation what- 
ever for the prairie value of confiscated land. That something 
will be allowed for improvements is probable, but Russian 
landlords did not usually sink much capital in their land as 
English proprietors do. Even allowing for the many com- 
promises and alterations in detail which are certain to be in- 
troduced, the scheme means broadly that the Russian landed 
class may find itself possessed, as the result of the revolution, 
of just as much land as each aristocratic family can till with 



A CLUE TO RUSSIA 219 

its own white hands. That is the real issue between revolu- 
tion and counter-revolution. 

The western reader may be tempted to dismiss such a 
scheme as this as visionary doctrinaire socialism. It is far 
from being that. Socialism in western countries has a vision- 
ary look, because it is the product of theoretic thinking with 
no basis of tradition behind it. Even the peasant in the West 
believes in the private ownership of land. The Russian peas- 
ant, on the contrary, regards private ownership as a criminal 
usurpation. He grew up in the Mir, or village commune, which 
owned the inadequate stock of common land as its collective 
proprietor and parceled it out periodically in thin and hungry 
strips among its families. The institution is as ancient as our 
common Indo-European origin, and it has formed all the 
peasant's conceptions of property. To him the immoral, 
the antisocial thing is to seize and possess and bequeath 
more land than one can till. Again and again, from Pogat- 
cheff's rebellion in the seventeenth century down to the 
emancipation of the serfs, the rumor has spread among the 
peasants that the Tsar was going to give back to them the 
land which the aristocracy had filched from them. The revo- 
lution is going at last to do what the Little Father never 
did. M. Stolypin, realizing that a conservative Russia must 
be based on private property, began in 1907, through a law 
carried by a coup d'etat, to break up the Mir and to create 
a class of peasant owners. That law in ten years had wrought 
a good deal of destruction, but it could not reverse the think- 
ing of centuries. 

It is idle to discuss the expediency of restoring the land — 
the morality of it seems to me to need no defense. It is 
what nine tenths of the Russian people demand. Even the 
Liberal-Conservative Cadets would have to deal with this 
question, as they tried to do in 1906, and in one way or another 
would have to insure to each peasant family a holding on 
which it could live. The dangerous point of the scheme is 
its insistence on expropriation without compensation. Here 



220 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

again, it is fact rather than theory which is decisive. "The 
State," as a Russian Socialist expert put it to me, "cannot 
pay compensation, and the peasants will not." With the ruble 
at about a quarter of its pre-war exchange value, and the 
external war debt mounting to a total which threatens bank- 
ruptcy, it seems idle to the purpose that the state should buy 
out the landlords. As for the peasants, who is going to coerce 
them? Not the army, for it is composed of peasants reck- 
oning on the day when peace will mean for them the conquest 
of Russian soil. Not the police, it is all disbanded. Not the 
constituent assembly, for nine tenths of it will be elected 
by peasant votes. The municipal elections in the towns result 
in immense Socialist majorities. The Cadets have no early 
prospect of attaining power. The peasants care nothing for 
Socialist theory and have a certain intuitive dread of "Maxi- 
malists" and of Petrograd. But they will vote only for candi- 
dates who promise them the land. 

It is a fairly safe axiom in politics that land is one of the 
two or three things for which a propertied class will always 
be willing to make a civil war. Its interests are solid, for 
when once you have abolished private property in agricultural 
land, the oil-wells and mines suggest themselves as interest- 
ing marginal cases, and when the owners of these begin to 
tremble, the whole capitalist world feels nervous. But what 
is property to do ? A direct frontal attack is hopeless. It can 
only conduct a guerrilla warfare, disparage the revolution as 
far as it can, sow dissensions in its ranks, make the utmost 
use of the war, and postpone the evil day by putting off the 
date of the constituent assembly. It has attempted one coun- 
ter-revolution already, but Korniloff's venture does not sug- 
gest that this is a hopeful expedient. The Cossacks, who are 
all small landowners holding by military tenure, may be 
induced to fight for it. The wilder non-Russian soldiery, Tur- 
comans, Moslem Tartars, and the rest, might be united or 
bribed into supporting it. But with these exceptions, the 
rank and rile of the army is solid for the revolution. So long 



A CLUE TO RUSSIA 221 

as it is mobilized, a military coup d'etat in its present condi- 
tion is doomed to failure. Its condition might perhaps be 
changed. The restoration of discipline, even by the drastic and 
wholesale revival of the death penalty, was a good war cry 
while the Germans were breaking through on a wavering point. 

My own belief is that the demoralization of the Russian 
army has been grossly and deliberately exaggerated. Honest 
men exaggerated it, in the hope of rousing Russia to a sense 
of shame. Less honest men exaggerated it in order to discredit 
the revolution. German military critics, including a progres- 
sive writer like Colonel Gadke, were amazed by these lamenta- 
tions, and placed on record the view of the German army that, 
on the whole, the Russians fought well even in their retreats. 
There was real demoralization only at one point, but that 
was after a too rash and gallant offensive had ended in mere 
massacre. In the retreats of 191 5 the Russian army lost 
900,000 prisoners. Was there no demoralization then? In 
the retreat of this summer the prisoners amounted to 23,000. 
Newspapers have one measure for a Grand Ducal commander 
in chief and another for a revolutionary army. The intention 
behind all this excessive insistence on discipline was partly 
to discredit the provisional government and partly to pave 
the way for the introduction of the old iron rule which would 
again make an automatic army — the kind of army which 
will follow its chiefs wherever they may lead. To-day these 
chiefs may lead it against the Germans, to-morfow they may 
march on Petrograd. It is this fear that the army may again 
be hammered into a dull tool for despotism, which explains 
the anxiety of the Socialists as they listen to proposals for 
restoring the habit of passive obedience. If Korniloff had been 
a little less sanguine and impatient, if he had restored dis- 
cipline effectively before he launched his picked divisions 
against Kerensky, it is just possible that he might have had 
a temporary success. 

The conflict is postponed, it is not settled. No propertied 
class would accept defeat at this stage. Before the plan of 



222 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

confiscation is adopted, it will try other expedients. In the 
last resort, it may appeal to foreign aid. For the moment 
this counter-revolutionary tendency, popularized by a con- 
servative press, undoubtedly has the sympathy of most of 
our English middle class. The issue is not understood. Our 
public sees that revolutionary Russia is useless as an aggres- 
sive element in the war, it forgets that after May, 191 5, 
Tsarist Russia did no better. The plain fact is that this mili- 
tary failure is not so much moral as material. Three nations 
in Europe have shown the capacity to conduct war year after 
year on the modern scale: France, Britain, and Germany. 
Austria, backward when compared with these three, advanced 
when compared with Russia, is almost at the end of her 
endurance. It is only the developed industries, the elaborate 
railways, the good roads, the diffused education, the habit of 
orderly work of a modern civilization, which enables Britain, 
France, and Germany to endure the strain. Russia, with her 
infant industries, her sparse railways, her execrable roads, 
her general illiteracy and the slack rhythm of unorganized 
peasant labor, is unable to adapt herself to the trial. The 
food problem threatens this winter to make general famine, 
and the reason is primarily that the whole capacity of the 
railways is required to feed the army at the front. Production 
has fallen off, but distribution is the chief problem. No gal- 
lant Cossack adventurer, however childlike, can alter a situa- 
tion like this. Neither Kerensky's speeches, nor the Soviet 
proclamations, nor even the death penalty, can enable a 
backward, neglected, primitive, agricultural country to wage 
war on the modern industrial scale. 

The chief difference between revolution and counter-revo- 
lution is that while the former appeals to us to moderate our 
war aims, summons us to council at Stockholm, and works 
with all its sincerity for an early general peace, the latter 
would be only too likely to seek an accommodation by some 
devious back way. What the counter-revolutionary party 
does as an opposition, or might do if it were in power, is 



A CLUE TO RUSSIA 223 

determined, however, not so much by its opinions on European 
policy as by the exigencies of the internal Russian struggle. 
It is battling for the rights of property as it conceives them, 
it is opposing a movement which has latent in it a social revo- 
lution. It will make war and peace, it will call in the foreigner 
or drive out the foreigner, according as it reckons that one 
course or the other will serve its class interests in its dire 
peril. The internal lines of division in Russia are fast becom- 
ing sharper and deeper than any frontier. 



THE GERMAN IDEAL OF THE STATE 1 
Heinrich von Treitschke 

[Heinrich von Treitschke (i 834-1 896) was born in Saxony and first 
came into prominence as lecturer on history at the University of Leipzig. 
His ardent advocacy of German unity under Prussian leadership in 1866 
caused him to remove to Berlin, where from 1873 he was Professor of 
History in the University of Berlin. His chief works are "Die Politik" 
(189 7- 1 898) and his "History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century" 
(1874-1894). During his lifetime he was the most popular and influential 
exponent of the Hohenzollern theory of the supremacy of the state over 
the individual and of the righteousness and necessity of war.] 

Let us now apply the standard of a deeper and real Chris- 
tian civilization to the State, and let us bear in mind that the 
existence of this great collective personality is power, and 
that therefore the highest moral duty of the State is to foster 
this power. The individual is bound to sacrifice himself for 
the next higher community of which he is a member ; but 
the State itself is the highest among the communities of men, 
and therefore the duty of self-abnegation cannot apply to it. 
The Christian duty of self-sacrifice for something higher does 
not exist for the State, for the reason that there is nothing 
above and beyond it in the world's history, and consequently 
it cannot sacrifice itself for another. When the State sees 
its downfall approaching, we praise it if it goes to its downfall 
sword in hand. A sacrifice for a foreign nation is not only 
non-moral, but it is contrary to the idea of self-assertion which 
is the highest law of the State. 

Thus we find it necessary to distinguish between public 
and private morality. The rank of the various duties must 

1 From "Die Politik," translated for "Germany's War Mania." London, 
1914. 

224 



THE GERMAN IDEAL OF THE STATE 225 

necessarily be very different for the State and the individual 
man. There is a whole series of these duties which are im- 
posed upon the individual which are absolutely out of ques- 
tion for the State. The State's highest law is that of self- 
assertion; that is for it the absolute morality. Therefore, 
one must assert that of all political sins, the worst and most 
contemptible is weakness ; it is the sin against the holy ghost 
of politics. In private life certain weaknesses of the soul are 
excusable. But of these there is no question in the State ; for 
the State is might, and if it should belie its very essence, there 
would be no judgment severe enough for it. Think of the 
reign of Frederick William IV. Magnanimity and gratitude 
are certainly political virtues, but only when they are not 
opposed to the main object of politics, the maintenance of 
its own power. In the year 1849 the thrones of every possible 
German principality were shaken. Frederick William took 
a step which in itself was justifiable ; he sent Prussian troops 
into Saxony and Bavaria, and restored order therein. But 
now came the mortal sin. Were the Prussians there in order 
to shed their blood for the King of Saxony or of Bavaria? 
There must be some permanent advantage for Prussia to 
be derived therefrom. We had the little ones in our grip; 
we only needed to allow the troops to remain there until 
these princes had adapted themselves to the new German 
Empire. Instead of this, the King withdrew his troops 
and quite properly the little ones made a long nose behind 
their backs as they marched away. That was simply unthink- 
able weakness; the blood of the Prussian nation had been 
sacrificed for nothing. 

It further follows from the nature of the State as sovereign 
power, that it can recognize no arbiter above itself, and that 
moreover constitutional obligations must be subject in a last 
resort to its jurisdiction. We have to bear that in mind in 
order that in times of crisis we may not judge like Philistines 
from the advocate's point of view. When Prussia broke the 
treaty of Tilsit, she was from the standpoint of the . civil 



226 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

procedure in the wrong. But who is there to-day who will have 
the brazen face to assert this? Even the French could not 
do so any longer. That also holds in the case of national 
treaties which are not quite so immoral as was that one en- 
forced on Prussia by France. Thus every State reserves 
to itself the right to judge of its treaty obligations for itself, 
and the historian cannot here step in with his purely conven- 
tional standards. He must ask the deeper question as to 
whether the unconditional duty of self-preservation does not 
justify the State. It was thus in Italy in 1859. Piedmont 
was the virtual aggressor; and Austria and her servile de- 
pendents in Germany did not fail to complain of the disturb- 
ance of the everlasting peace. But in reality Italy had been 
for years in a state of siege. No noble nation will ever toler- 
ate such a position, and in reality it was not Piedmont, but 
Austria, which took the offensive, because she had for years 
shamefully sinned by helping herself to Italy's greatest 
treasures. 

Thus it is the upholding of its own power that is the supreme 
moral duty of the State. But if we follow up the natural 
consequence of this truth, it becomes clear that the State 
must only set itself moral aims, or else it would be contradict- 
ing itself. 

Up to now the earnest thinker can hardly find any subject 
for disagreement, but now we come to a series of most diffi- 
cult questions with the consideration of how far political aims, 
moral in themselves, may be allowed the use of means which 
in civil life would be considered reprehensible. The well-known 
Jesuitical saying is in its unvarnished directness rough and 
radical, but no one can deny that it contains a certain amount 
of truth. There are in political life innumerable cases, as in 
the life of individuals, in which the use of pure methods is 
quite impossible. If it be possible, if it be feasible to obtain 
an objective moral in itself by moral means, then these are 
to be preferred even though their action may be slower and 
more inconvenient. 



THE GERMAN IDEAL OF THE STATE 227 

We have already seen that the power of truth and frank- 
ness in politics is greater than is usually supposed. The newer 
conception is that there is no impulse of truth inherent in 
man, and that it has arisen conventionally from the political 
aims. But not so. An impulse towards truth is indeed in- 
herent in man, but it varies according to times and nations. 
Even amongst the most mendacious of nations, the Orientals, 
we find this striving for truth. The elder brother of Welling- 
ton won for himself an enormous influence in India owing 
to the fact that the Nabobs knew that this man always said 
what he thought. On the whole, however, it is clear that 
political methods with nations on a lower grade of culture 
must be adapted to their powers of sensation and understand- 
ing. The historian who tried to judge European politics in 
Africa or in the East by the same standards as in Europe 
would be a fool. He who cannot inspire fear over there is lost. 



THE ARMY AND NATIONAL UNITY 1 
Heinrich von Treitschke 

[For a sketch of Professor Treitschke see page 224. The following 
selection consists of extracts from various parts of Treitschke's work, all 
dealing with his views on the value of war and the relation of the individ- 
ual to the state.] 

One must certainly, when considering war, remember that 
it does not always appear as a judgment of God ; there are 
also temporary results, but the life of a people is reckoned 
by centuries. The decisive verdict can only be obtained by 
the review of great epochs. A State like Prussia, which was 
freer and more rational than the French, might, owing to 
momentary exhaustion, be brought near annihilation, but it 
would then call to mind its inner life, and would thus regain 
its superiority. One must say with the greatest determina- 
tion : War is for an afflicted people the only remedy. When 
the State exclaims : My very existence is at stake ! then social 
self-seeking must disappear and all party hatred be silent. 
The individual must forget his own ego and feel himself a 
member of the whole, he must recognize how negligible is 
his life compared with the good of the whole. Therein lies 
the greatness of war, that the little man completely vanishes 
before the great thought of the State. The sacrifice of na- 
tionalities for one another is nowhere invested with such 
beauty as in war. At such a time the corn is separated from 
the chaff. All who lived through 1870 will understand the 
saying of Niebuhr with regard to the year 1813, that he then 
experienced the " bliss of sharing with all his fellow-citizens, 

1 From "Die Politik," translated for "Germany's War Mania." London, 
1914. 

228 



THE ARMY AND NATIONAL UNITY 229 

with the scholar and the ignorant, the one common feeling — 
no man who enjoyed this experience will to his dying day for- 
get how loving, friendly, and strong he felt." 

To the historian who lives in the realms of the Will, it is 
quite clear that the furtherance of an everlasting peace is 
fundamentally reactionary. He sees that to banish war from 
history would be to banish all progress and becoming. It is 
only the periods of exhaustion, weariness, and mental stag- 
nation that have dallied with the dream of everlasting peace. 

We are now in the third epoch (and again after a great 
war) which seems to have destroyed all the idealism of Ger- 
many. For „to-day an outburst of loud and shameless laughter 
from the vulgar greets the destruction of anything which 
Germany has made great. The very foundations of our noble, 
ancient culture are now being destroyed. All that which has 
raised us into a very aristocracy among the nations is derided 
and trodden under foot. Truly it is the right time now to 
indulge in fantastic ravings of everlasting peace ! It is not 
worth spending one's breath talking of such things. The 
living God will see to it that war returns again and again as 
a terrible medicine for humanity. 



From the fact that the army constitutes the aggregate 
physical power of a nation follows, moreover, that it is also 
interwoven in the most intimate fashion with the idea of the 
unity of the State. One may even assert that there is no 
institution which brings home to the thoughtful man so 
sharply the thought of the unity of the State and of the inter- 
dependence of the whole as an army organized in accordance 
with the real conditions of the nation. Commerce, art, and 
science are cosmopolitan and lead the way beyond the bound- 
aries of the nation. The common activity of elections, of the 
judge and jury, certainly strengthen the feeling of the State 
community; but parliamentary life does not only unite the 
citizens together in a common political labor, it also splits 



230 IDEALS OF GOVERNMENT 

them up again and sets parties against one another and un- 
avoidable hatred. 

A really popularly organized army is the only one of all 
political institutions that unites the burghers with burghers ; 
in the army alone do they feel themselves all united as sons 
of the Fatherland. After the experience we have had in the 
new German Empire this will hardly be disputed. The Ger- 
man army has become beyond all doubt the most supremely 
real and effective bond of national unity, and this most cer- 
tainly cannot be claimed for the German Reichstag, as had 
formerly been hoped. That institution is rather responsible 
for the fact that Germans have once again begun mutually 
to hate and calumniate one another. But the army has 
trained us into practical unity. 

For the reason that it embodies in the most striking manner 
for the masses of the people the idea of the unity of the 
State, the monarchy is therefore especially suited to take the 
direction of the army ; the King is the natural Commander 
in Chief. 



After all, it is the normal and reasonable course for a great 
nation to embody and train the very essence of the State, 
which is in itself power, in its organized military system and 
by means of its physical strength. And since we have lived 
in a warlike age, the hyper-delicate, philanthropic way of 
looking at these things has more and more been pressed into 
the background, so that with Clausewitz we have once again 
come to regard war as the forceful continuation of politics. 
Not all the advocates of peace in the world will ever succeed 
in bringing about such a state of affairs that all the political 
powers will be of one mind; if they are not of one mind, 
then there is nothing but the sword that can decide their 
differences of opinion. 

We have learned to recognize as the civilizing majesty of 
war precisely what appears to the superficial observers to be 



THE ARMY AND NATIONAL UNITY 231 

brutality and inhumanity. That one should for the sake of 
the Fatherland overcome the natural feelings of humanity, 
that men should murder one another who have never wronged 
one another, who perhaps highly esteem one another as 
chivalrous foes, that appears at first sight to be the frightful 
side of war, but also at the same time its greatness. Man 
must not only be ready to sacrifice his life, but also the natural 
deeply rooted feelings of the human soul ; he must devote his 
whole ego for the furtherance of a great patriotic idea : that 
is the moral sublimity of war. 



V 

THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 1 
Charles W. Eliot 

[Charles William Eliot (1834- ), a graduate of Harvard and its 
president from 1869 to 1909, has wielded a great influence on American 
education, especially in securing the adoption of the elective system in 
colleges. He has written largely on education and public affairs, and is 
one of the clearest thinkers on the problems of American life. Since the 
beginning of the World War he has written extensively on its issues and 
problems. His best essays are "American Contributions to Civilization " 
(1897), especially "The Working of American Democracy," and "The 
Modern Definition of the Cultivated Man" (1903). The present article, a 
few paragraphs of which have been omitted, presents perhaps as compre- 
hensive a survey of the war from a liberal point of view as can be found.] 

In a few weeks or months the American people will begin 
to sacrifice their sons by the thousand in the most savage 
and cruel war that has ever been waged. They have already 
begun to expend the savings of generations on preparations 
for fighting and destruction, and they have stopped innu- 
merable forms of expenditure which contributed to their 
welfare and that of their descendants. Under these circum- 
stances it is fitting that the voters and their political leaders 
review the war situation as it stands to-day, and take account 
of the gains for human liberty and the democratic form of 
government which have already been secured. ' 

The principal features of the war situation are as follows : 
(1) The two principal contestants — the Central Mon- 
archies and the Entente Allies — have demonstrated that 
each can hold the other in trench warfare ; so that no con- 
siderable, well-defended areas can be conquered by either 
party. In open country where the means of communication 

1 From New York Times, August 5, 191 7. Reprinted by permission. 

235 



236 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

are scanty or difficult each can successfully come back against 
the other after defeat or withdrawal, and neither side when 
occupying new territory has thus far been able to disarm or 
extinguish the opposing army. The Belgian, Serbian, and 
Rumanian armies are still on foot in large numbers, and no 
considerable body of German or Austro-Hungarian troops has 
thus far been forced to surrender. In three years neither side 
has won a military victory in the old sense. There has been 
no Austerlitz, or Waterloo, or Sedan, or Yorktown ; and there 
is not likely to be. In this sense, President Wilson was right 
when he used the ambiguous phrase "peace without victory." 
It has been a war without victory on land and without any 
victory on sea of the Nelson sort. 

(2) Industrial and financial strength having been proved 
necessary to the acquisition and maintenance of great mili- 
tary power, it appears that the manufacturing nations are 
the only ones that can endure long wars ; because they alone 
can create and maintain inexhaustible supplies of munitions 
and of the modern means of rapid transportation on land and 
water for both men and supplies. An agricultural or pastoral 
people engaged in serious war will require the aid of a manu- 
facturing people. Hence, ultimate success in war will go to 
the side which has been made wealthiest and strongest by 
successful commerce, agriculture, mining, and manufacturing ; 
provided that this wealth and these industrial achievements 
have not impaired the public morality and energy. 

(3) The success of Great Britain and France in developing 
under the most trying circumstances a greater efficiency than 
that of Germany in the manufactures indispensable to modern 
war has settled the question whether despotically ruled peoples 
have an advantage over free peoples in warfare in which every 
resource of modern science is utilized, and settled it in favor 
of the freer. 

(4) The war has also proved already that violations of 
treaties on the ground of military necessity and oppressive 
exactions on the population remaining in conquered territory 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 237 

do not profit the conqueror in the present state of the civilized 
world, except as he appropriates for immediate use machinery, 
fuel, foods, and raw material, but on the contrary are dis- 
astrous to him and his cause. In other words, the war has 
proved that the moral and physical forces which can be rallied 
to the side of international justice are sufficient to make acts 
of international injustice inexpedient and unprofitable. 

(5) It clearly appears that all the nations of Europe now 
recognized as such can command the services in proper pro- 
portion to their population of soldiers who are robust, brave, 
and patriotic, and that there is no nation in Europe so de- 
generate morally or physically that a strong and healthy 
nation may rightfully seize it and govern it for its own good. 
Both sides exhibit full capacity for acquiring the skill needed 
to use artillery, airplanes, telephones, photographs, and motor 
trucks; and all are capable of hand-to-hand fighting with 
bayonets, swords, knives, and hand grenades. The primitive 
savage with all his hunting and fighting instincts reappears 
to-day in civilized white men as well as in Turks, Turcos, and 
Gurkhas. 

(6) As the war has gone on the conviction has gradually 
penetrated all the governments and peoples concerned that 
the redressing of three great international wrongdoings must 
be included in any terms of settlement which are to have a 
fair chance of leading to durable peace. These wrongs are the 
partition of Poland (1772), the wresting of Alsace-Lorraine 
from France by Germany (1871), accompanied by an attempt 
to " bleed France white," and the Treaty of Berlin (1878), 
which outraged Russia and planted seeds of fierce discord 
among the Balkan peoples. All thinking people have come 
to understand that no permanent peace for Europe or any 
relief from competitive armaments can be obtained without 
disinfecting these festering sores. And yet this disinfection 
cannot but prove a very difficult task. 

(7) The war has greatly strengthened the conviction, held 
by most publicists who have had occasion to consider the 



238 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

causes of grave international disputes, that the peace of the 
world would be much more secure if nations which possess 
few ports or none could obtain, under firm international con- 
ventions, free access to the seas and oceans through the terri- 
tories and ports of other nations. An interior country, like 
Serbia, or a great interior sub-arctic region like the Russian 
empire or Canada, needs for its own free life and growth access 
to the seas and oceans through the ports of other countries, 
if it has few or none of its own. For the full enjoyment of 
such rights durable peace is necessary. Remove from the 
European world, or the whole world, the apprehension of war, 
and the dread that an insular population, or a population, 
confined within an interior area, naturally feels lest it be de- 
prived of an adequate supply of foods or raw materials, and 
a principal cause of war would be removed. The Germans' 
dread of such compression and such deprivation, coupled with 
an extraordinary belief in the superiority of German civiliza- 
tion to every other civilization, seems to have been the under- 
lying cause of the present war. 

(8) Although the strength and endurance of the belligerents 
are by no means exhausted, there is a new disposition to 
speculate and talk about peace ever since President Wilson 
requested the Central Monarchies on the one side and the 
Entente Allies on the other to state the terms on which they 
would consent to make peace. Although the two parties are 
still wide apart in regard to the preliminary terms or condi- 
tions on which negotiations for peace might be opened, and 
although the present condition of Russia has raised new hopes 
in the minds of the German oligarchy, the disposition of the 
several governments to talk about terms of peace is an im- 
portant feature of the present situation. It is supported, if 
not induced, by the state of mind among the soldiers of all 
the nations at war. It will be a dire calamity for the human 
race if peace negotiations are opened before the Central Mon- 
archies publicly repent of the invasion of Serbia, the violation 
of the neutrality treaties on behalf of Belgium, the sinking of 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 239 

the Lusitania, and the Prussian-Turkish treatment of non- 
combatants. 

Two new implements of warfare have been developed during 
the war — the airplane and the submarine ; but the capacities 
of neither for destruction have been fully revealed. Both 
violate in practice — by necessity — most of the rules which 
international law has tried to establish for the protection of 
non-combatants and the mitigation of the horrors of war. 
Those who use them require singular skill, courage, and en- 
durance ; but neither mercy nor chivalry can often influence 
their deeds. Those, too, whose duty is to destroy either air- 
planes or submarines must do so without the least regard to 
their human occupants. The submarine forces on everybody, 
assailant or defendant, the policy of killing at sight. Drown 
or choke your adversary without giving any chance of escape. 
Take no prisoners. These policies or methods are not yet 
publicly and avowedly adopted on land. The airplane in- 
volves single combat, or combat in small groups, under very 
dangerous conditions for both parties, and with little chance 
to surrender for either side. It is kill or be killed. " Bomb- 
ing" by airplanes means miscellaneous destruction of life and 
property without taking good aim. This kind of warfare is 
peculiarly revolting, in spite of the extraordinary bravery and 
fortitude of the men who engage in it. The use made of sub- 
marines by Germany proves that during war d Voutrance 
between great powers neutrals have no protection against 
being sunk while passing between neutral ports. This is a new 
barbarity in war. All nations with exterior trade are interested 
in determining now, if possible, the future of the submarine. 

Such is the formidable scene in which the American people 
are about to become one of the principal actors. As they 
enter on this fearful task they can reasonably draw inspira- 
tion and hope from the great gains for liberty and democracy 
which have been already achieved through the war. 

The war has brought about extraordinary progress for de- 
mocracy in Europe, especially in Great Britain and Russia. 



240 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

In Great Britain the gains of democracy within three years 
have been much more considerable than in all the hundred 
years previous. They have taken effect chiefly in the execu- 
tive branch of the Government, including the army and navy, 
but also in the legislative; and the gains seem likely to be 
permanent. Three years ago no one familiar with the condi- 
tions of public life in Great Britain would have believed that 
three men with the antecedents of Kitchener, Bonar Law, and 
Lloyd George could exercise supreme powers in the civil 
government during the greatest crisis in British history, or 
that a democratic, extemporized British army could succeed 
to the former aristocratic regular army, and fight better. 
After ten days' discussion the House of Commons lately 
adopted by a vote of eight to one a large measure of suffrage 
reform under the title of ''Representation of the People 
Bill." In Russia, the coup d'etat was a sudden act and pre- 
mature, but long foretold in the growing strength and capacity 
for local government of the provincial and municipal councils, 
and in the increasing activity in large business of the co- 
operative societies. It is as yet impossible to tell whether 
the inexperienced Russian democracy will or will not prove 
itself capable of establishing at this first effort a firm and 
efficient Government in a democratic form; but the revolu- 
tion has already accomplished much preliminary work toward 
that end, and it is almost impossible to believe that the Czar- 
dom, or anything like it, can be reproduced in Russia, or that 
the landed nobility and the permanent official class, both 
military and civil, can regain the power they have lost. 

It is equally difficult to believe that the professional, com- 
mercial, and manufacturing classes which have now assumed 
political leadership with strong support from large portions 
of the agricultural class will be compelled to resign it to labor 
agitators, socialistic extremists, or disciples of Tolstoy. The 
United States, believing that Russia will no more return to 
a Romanoff Czar than France to a Bourbon King, is co- 
operating with the Provisional Government in every possible 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 241 

way — with its money, supplies, and engineering experience, 
and with its practice in political and religious liberty and its 
hearty sympathy. Such cooperation between two huge de- 
mocracies augurs well for the future safety of democracy 
throughout the world. The unexampled experiment which 
the mission to Russia from the United States has had in hand 
is one of extraordinary interest ; for it is an effort on the part 
of a people long accustomed to public liberty to help a multi- 
tudinous people with no experience of political freedom and 
but lately escaped from serfdom to establish in wartime a 
firm and effective republican Government. 

It is an immense permanent gain for democracy that the 
democratic Governments of Great Britain and France have 
proved themselves capable of great efficiency in time of war. 
Comparative study of democratic and autocratic Govern- 
ments during the last 130 years has revealed the fact that 
in times of peace democratic Governments are not so effective 
as autocratic Governments can sometimes be in promoting 
the physical welfare of the people governed. Germany had 
cleaner and better ordered cities, more effective vocational 
schools, and better sanitary and medical supervision than 
any democratic government in Europe or America could 
show; so that many people doubted whether a democratic 
government could develop as much efficiency in war as an 
autocratic government. But both Great Britain and France 
have already exhibited, and the United States is about to 
exhibit, a greater efficiency in war and in the industries that 
support war than Germany or any other autocratic Govern- 
ment has ever attained. 

The war has also proved that free peoples, in which financial 
and industrial corporate management has been largely de- 
veloped and many citizens possess a high degree of personal 
initiative and energy in their daily work, can outdo in indus- 
trial productiveness any peoples that are autocratically gov- 
erned. The free peoples may start far in the rear when war 
breaks out ; but in a year or two they will catch up with and 



242 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

surpass their autocratically governed opponents. This is a 
demonstration of high importance to the democracies of the 
future, as well as of great significance in regard to the out- 
come of the present war, for these methods of democratic 
society, which are quite independent of government processes, 
are prime sources of democratic efficiency. 

It has also been proved that democratic armies fight better 
than armies aristocratically organized and autocratically gov- 
erned ; or, in other words, that the armies of nations in which 
the mass of the people determine legislation, elect their public 
servants, and settle questions of peace and war, fight better 
than the armies of an autocrat who rules by right of birth 
and by commission from the Almighty. The obedient, sub- 
missive soldier who always acts under orders without per- 
sonal initiative or intelligent comprehension of his immediate 
task is outclassed by the independent soldier who possesses 
personal initiative, and is capable of understanding both the 
ultimate purpose of the righting and the immediate object of 
the movement in which he is to take part. The soldier who 
is to take effective part in trench warfare must be capable of 
righting intelligently and persistently without seeing or hear- 
ing an officer, or even a non-commissioned officer, during the 
actual charge. The great war has developed in the democratic 
countries a new and more effective kind of private soldier and 
a new and more effective kind of officer ; and in producing 
these better kinds of soldier and officer a democracy has a 
great and permanent advantage over an autocracy. 

The war and Germany's elaborate preparation for it have 
proved beyond all doubt that no reliance for the peace of the 
world can be placed on any of the Utopian schemes which for 
centuries have been from time to time announced as sure 
methods of preventing war and leaving mankind free to ad- 
vance, unafraid and at ease, on peaceful paths of gradual 
political, industrial, and social development. Discussions of 
world Parliaments, world public opinion, world courts, vast 
leagues to prevent war, societies of nations, and schemes to 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 243 

reform the world through improved methods of education 
and improved international law, were never so rife as in the 
twenty years before the present war broke out. No one of 
these schemes has even approached fulfillment, or, indeed, 
definite formulation; but the two Hague Conferences, al- 
though they were in many respects disappointing, had per- 
suaded some people inclined to political and philanthropic 
speculation that the time was near when international law 
and international organization could prevent international 
war without the use of force. 

All these plans and hopes were completely defeated by the 
outbreak of the present war ; and they will remain defeated 
and powerless so long as a single strong nation in Europe 
adheres to the principles and practices of autocratic govern- 
ment allied with a large class of professional soldiers. The 
same may be said of the official religions which prevail among 
the various belligerents to-day. No one of the national 
churches or religious institutions concerned — Buddhist, 
Greek, Roman, Mohammedan, or Protestant — has shown 
the least capacity to obstruct or condemn the long and elab- 
orate preparation for war by Germany, or to oppose the 
unchristian philosophy concerning the State which justified 
that preparation, or to prevent the outbreak of the war, or 
to mitigate its unexampled ferocity. It is a large gain for 
humanity to have learned, once for all, that no inchoate 
international organization and no ' instituted religion or es- 
tablished church can be depended on to secure to the civilized 
world of to-day an enduring peace and to all nations a rightful 
liberty. Peace, liberty, and justice must be secured by prac- 
ticable measures of obvious immediate serviceableness. The 
world in agony is in no mood for remote goals or vast and 
hazy imaginings ; it will take the one step which seems 
feasible and be satisfied with that. It will be a martial step ; 
but its goal will be human brotherhood. 

The war has also demonstrated that the progress of man- 
kind in knowledge of nature and its laws, and in skill in 



244 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

utilizing those laws and the material resources of the earth 
to human advantage will not prevent war, and do not neces- 
sarily tend to the preservation of peace. The chemical and 
physical inventions of the last hundred and fifty years have 
made the present war infinitely more destructive and horrible 
than any earlier war, and indeed seem to be partly accountable 
for the extreme ferocity with which war has been conducted 
in Europe and the Near East for three years. The world has 
learned that the same scientific discoveries and industrial 
inventions which make the average lot of mankind freer and 
happier in peace times are capable of making that lot su- 
premely wretched in war times ; because they increase fright- 
fully the destructiveness of war. The nations, therefore, must 
not depend on any Utopian theories, or any ecclesiastical 
institutions, or any progress in literature, science, and the 
arts to defend them in the future from catastrophes and 
miseries such as the civilized world is now enduring. The 
means of securing peace hereafter will be simple and prac- 
ticable, because based on experience in the present war, and 
efficacious, because supported by an overwhelming peace- 
preserving international force. 



Must, then, gentle and reasonable men and women give 
over their sons to the National Government to be trained for 
the devilish work of war? Must civilized society continue 
to fight war with war ? Is not that process a complete failure ? 
Shall we not henceforth contend against evil-doing by good- 
doing, against brutality by gentleness, against vice in others 
solely by virtue in ourselves ? There are many sound answers 
to these insistent queries. One is the policeman, usually a 
protective and adjusting force, but armed and trained to 
hurt and kill in defense of society against criminals and 
lunatics. Another is the mother who blazes into violence, 
with all her little might, in defense of her child. Even the 
little birds do that. Another is the instinctive forcible 



GAINS FROM THE WAR 245 

resistance of any natural man to insult or injury committed 
or threatened against his mother, wife, or daughter. The 
lions and tigers do as much. A moving answer of a different 
sort is found in words written by Mme. le Verrier to the 
parents of Victor Chapman on her return from his funeral in 
the American Church in Paris — "It . . . has brought home 
to me the beauty of heroic death and the meaning of life." 
The answer from history is that primitive Governments were 
despotic, and in barbarous societies might makes right ; but 
that liberty under law has been wrung from authority and 
might by strenuous resistance, physical as well as moral, and 
not by yielding to injustice or practicing non-resistance. 
The Dutch Republic, the British Commonwealth, the French 
Republic, the Italian and Scandinavian constitutional mon- 
archies, and the American republics have all been developed 
by generations of men ready to fight and fighting. So long 
as there are wolves, sheep cannot form a safe community. 
The precious liberties which a few more fortunate or more 
vigorous nations have won by fighting for them generation 
after generation, those nations will have to preserve by keep- 
ing ready to fight in their defense. The only complete answer 
to these arguments in favor of using force in defense of liberty 
is that liberty is not worth the cost. In free countries to-day 
very few persons hold that opinion. 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 1 

Archibald C. Coolidge 

[Archibald Cary Coolidge (1866- ) was educated at Harvard, and, 
after several years' connection with the American diplomatic service in 
European capitals, returned to Harvard and is now Professor of Euro- 
pean History. In 19 14 he was Harvard Exchange Professor at the Uni- 
versity of Berlin. He has written "The United States as a World Power" 
(1908) and "The Origins of the Triple Alliance" (1918). The discus- 
sion below, from which some paragraphs have been omitted, summarizes 
with admirable detachment the basic facts on which a settlement of the 
World War in accordance with the principle of nationality must be made.] 

Apart from whatever sympathies we may feel in regard to 
the war now devastating Europe, most of us fervently hope 
that at least it may not soon be followed by another ; that is 
to say, that when peace is concluded, the settlement arrived 
at may contain the elements of some sort of permanence. 
This does not mean that every one can be or will be satisfied 
and that many seemingly reasonable desires, even of the 
victors, will not have to be relinquished. It does mean that 
in as many cases as possible the settlement shall be based on 
broad grounds of human rights and legitimate interests which 
will content those who profit by them, while not appearing 
too unjust to the rest of the world. 

A first condition of this is that in the Europe of the future, 
so far as may be, no people and especially no great people 
shall be forced to live in a manner to which it cannot be 
expected to resign itself. The defeated parties in the conflict 
will doubtless have to give up or postpone indefinitely what 
are to them natural and proper ambitions. This is the common 
lot of the vanquished. Nevertheless, if peace is to be lasting, 

1 From Yale Review, April, 191 5. Reprinted by permission. 
246 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 247 

existence must not be made intolerable for them. For in- 
stance, such a regime as Napoleon imposed on Prussia cannot 
in the long run be fastened on a defeated enemy, nor can any 
complete economic or geographic servitude. Thus it is safe 
to predict that if Germany, as a result of victory over Russia, 
were to hand over Finland to Sweden and to take the Baltic 
provinces for herself, Russia would sooner or later risk another 
struggle in order to regain a sufficient shore on the Ealtic. 
Conversely, in the case of the triumph of the Allies, a treaty 
of peace which should deprive of direct access to the Adriatic 
the German populations not only of Austria but, through her, 
of the German Empire, might be pregnant with trouble for the 
future. Even the retention of certain isolated positions of 
vantage, however tempting as immediate booty, might mean 
such serious consequences that the advisability would be more 
than questionable. Could any good that Germany might 
obtain from the possession of Constantinople compensate for 
the permanent hostility of Russia, which such possession must 
engender? Would it even be wise for England to take back 
Helgoland when experience has shown that Spain can never 
get reconciled to her owning Gibraltar, which will always 
remain a stumbling-block to good relations between the two 
countries? A permanent sore spot should not be lightly 
created even by the most successful power. 

Another class of considerations turns on the desire of the 
populations themselves in any future determination of fron- 
tiers. We Americans in particular believe in government 
with the consent of the governed. When exceptions must 
be made, we think of them as justified only by temporary 
necessity, as in the South after our Civil War, or by the 
racial inferiority of the governed, as, let us say, in the case 
of the negro. None the less, we hold to the general prin- 
ciple, and it is one that is admitted even by the most reac- 
tionary autocracy as being desirable. Now, in the disputed 
regions of Europe to-day, not only the consent but the ardent 
aspirations of the governed on the whole correspond with what 



248 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

we call nationality. And aspirations of the nationalities to 
shape their own destinies are not a matter of internal politics 
only. In the last hundred years, the strivings of Greeks, 
Italians, Germans, Magyars, South Slavs, Alsatians, and others 
against foreign rulers have been of the utmost international as 
well as national consequence. It is true the discontent of the 
Irish has seldom, owing to the insular position of the United 
Kingdom, been of more than local importance, but the Polish 
question has been a running sore in general European politics 
ever since the partitions in the eighteenth century. 

Let us hope, therefore, that in the reconstruction of Europe 
the wishes of the various nationalities shall be important 
factors in determining the bounds of the different states. 
There may be confederations among the smaller ones for the 
common advantage, but such unions should be voluntary 
and should leave sufficient play for the individuality of each. 
At first sight this seems simple. We take a race map of the 
Continent, note the chief splashes of color on it, and evolve 
the ideal Europe of the future to correspond with these 
splashes, leaving out of account the little detached ones that 
interfere with the general scheme. This kind of map-making 
has been popular of late. Any imaginative contributor to a 
newspaper may indulge in it, it can be understood by the 
meanest intelligence, and it appeals to the sympathies as a 
generous attempt to reconstruct society in accordance with 
the fundamental rights of man. Unfortunately, when we come 
to look at solutions of this sort with a little care, we perceive 
that they bristle with difficulties. We soon learn that our 
race map alone is not a safe guide, for it leaves out such 
physical features as mountains. Ethnical and natural physical 
frontiers seldom coincide exactly. For instance, they do not 
in a good part of the western Alps, or of the Pyrenees, or of 
the Carpathians. To which frontier are we to give the 
preference, the geographical or the racial? This is perhaps a 
minor problem that can often be solved by a few mutual 
concessions; but it is a part of the general question as to 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 249 

what extent rights of nationality are superior to those based 
on other considerations. 

At the very outset, we are faced by uncertainty as to the 
meaning of our terms. What is nationality? On what is 
it based ? Not on race — ■ most of the nations of Europe are 
of too mixed and uncertain origin to have blood count for 
much. The skull measurements in the different parts of the 
Continent suggest totally different divisions from the modern 
political and linguistic ones. It is worth remarking here that 
an imaginary descent may be of more importance than the 
real one. It matters little whether the modern Greeks are or 
are not descended from the ancient Hellenes. What is of 
consequence is that they believe they are. This belief affects 
them profoundly; it permeates their national consciousness 
and is a fundamental part of their psychology. In the same 
way, we need not care to what extent the modern Rumanians 
are the children of the Roman legionaries and colonists and 
to what extent they are of Dacian, Slavic, or other origin. 
The thing that counts is that, speaking a Latin language, 
they regard themselves as a Latin people, akin to the French, 
Italians, and Spaniards, something different from the Slavs 
about them, something more western, the heirs to an older 
civilization. Although they belong to the Greek Orthodox 
church, they turn for inspiration not to Constantinople and 
Moscow, but to Rome and Paris. 

We know that the Swiss are a nation though composed 
of several nationalities, and that as long as these prefer to 
remain in their present glorious little republic no one has a 
right to interfere with them, though this doctrine is hardly 
acceptable to the extreme partisans of Pan- Germanism or of 
Italia Irredenta. We apply the same principle to the Belgians 
though they speak two languages; but of what nationality 
are the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine? The Germans claim 
the Alsatians as German by speech and descent as well as by 
most of their history. The French base their arguments on 
what they regard as a more modern conception, that of 



250 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

national consciousness and desire, of common ideas and 
aspirations. They declare that, though the French language 
is that of the great mass of the people in France, and is the 
official and literary vehicle of expression — one they believe 
superior to any other — nevertheless a Basque, a Breton, a 
Fleming, an Alsatian, may be a genuine and most patriotic 
Frenchman even if he knows nothing but his local dialect. 
It must be admitted that in this instance the claim to a 
nationality, as based on language and history, cannot well be 
reconciled with our belief in government with the consent of 
the governed. Had the Germans, during the last forty years, 
been as successful in Alsace-Lorraine as the Americans have 
been in our own South, the situation would be different. As 
it is, compromise or reconciliation has not been reached, and 
the question of the future allegiance of Alsace-Lorraine has 
once more been referred to arbitrament of the sword. 

In many European countries, ethnographical statistics are 
to be accepted with much caution. To be sure, partisan guesses 
are still more unreliable, for where no official figures exist, the 
widest play is left to passion and imagination; witness the 
extraordinary estimates that have been made frequently in 
good faith of the strength of the various elements in Mace- 
donia. In lands where there are official statistics, we may 
take it for granted that the nationality which has charge 
of the census will get more than its share in the returns. 
Doubtful and neutral elements can always be used to swell 
the figures. For instance, in the Austrian province of Gali- 
cia, 808,000 out of a total of 871,000 Jews are officially recorded 
as speaking Polish, which assures to the Poles a good majority 
of the population. In the neighboring province of Bukowina, 
out of 192,000 Jews, 95,000 are put down as Germans. In 
both cases the real language of most of the Jews is Yiddish. 
Now, if as a result of the present war, Russia keeps Galicia, 
the Jews of the eastern half of the province will no longer be 
reckoned as Poles; and if at the same time Rumania gets 
Bukowina, the Jews there will soon go to swell the Rumanian 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 251 

element in that province, and there is no reason why they 
should not. Why should not the Jew in the Dual Empire 
transfer his linguistic allegiance? It is often transferred for 
him. If he lives in southern Hungary, he may be to-day an 
ardent Magyar, though his father was counted as a German ; 
and it may be the duty of his son to be a good Rumanian or 
Servian without his wishes being consulted in any event. 
This does not mean that the Jews as a race are always prompt 
to change their linguistic or other allegiance with each shift 
of their political fortune. There are plenty of cases to the 
contrary. Many Jews have, for example, been good Polish 
patriots. A more surprising recent instance of their abiding 
loyalty to one country is the obstinacy with which the colony 
of Jews from Livorno, settled in Tunis, have remained irrec- 
oncilably Italian in their opposition to French rule. 

But even after admitting language to be the chief though 
not the only determinant of nationality, we still have to 
inquire what constitutes a language, and the answer is some- 
times far from easy. Whatever the philologists may have 
decided, there is sometimes from a political point of view 
great difficulty in distinguishing between a language and a 
dialect. Such things may be matters of national conscious- 
ness rather than of grammar or vocabulary; indeed, practi- 
cally the same tongue may be regarded as a dialect or as a 
language, according to where it happens to be spoken. Dutch 
is a language, but the claim of Flemish is a little more doubtful ; 
and they are both mere branches of Low German which is 
admittedly nothing but a dialect. In the same way, Portu- 
guese is a language, but Gallejo, which hardly differs from it, 
counts as a dialect of Spanish. Modern languages have 
grown out of certain local dialects, and the process is still 
going on. Astonishing as it may seem, the tendency in 
Europe to-day, in spite of the tremendous increase of the 
ease and the need of communication throughout mankind, 
and in spite of the strength of such cosmopolitan movements 
as socialism, appears to be rather towards the multiplication 



252 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

than to the diminution of tongues. Within recent years, 
written Norwegian has been drawing further away from written 
Danish, with which it formerly was almost identical. Slovak 
has come to regard itself as an independent speech not as a 
dialect of Bohemian, and Moravian may possibly do the same. 
All the efforts of the Russian government to maintain the 
unity of the national language and to keep Little Russian in 
the position of a mere dialect, like Plattdeutsch in Germany, 
have not prevented the growth of a strong Ukrainophil party 
in southern Russia, which in time may menace the political 
as well as the linguistic unity of the empire ; indeed it is one 
of the most serious perils that threatens its future. The Little 
Russians have among themselves local differences that may 
develop, and to the north of them are the White Russians, 
as yet without a separatist consciousness, but capable of 
finding one. In Ireland, Irish still lingers, and at least the 
teaching of it is on the increase ; and even in France all the 
intense patriotism and pride in la patrie and her language 
that every Frenchman feels, have been required to keep the 
Provencal movement in the nineteenth century within the 
bounds of a harmless literary cult, and prevent its getting into 
politics and weakening the unity of the French nation. 

Enthusiasts for liberty are apt to overlook the sad truth 
that, however admirable the development of national and 
linguistic consciousness may be of itself, it does not necessarily 
make for peace among nationalities any more than do free 
institutions and advanced civilization. On the contrary, in 
mixed districts, as long as there are no schools or legislative 
bodies, the question of what language shall prevail in such 
institutions does not come up. When, at least in the form of 
newspapers, posters, and shop-signs, the written word becomes 
a necessity for the most inert minds, the need of a common 
medium increases. Here progress and friction are apt to go 
hand in hand. The very fact that men are thrown together so 
much more than they used to be makes it the more irritating 
if they are unable to understand one another. To admit that 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 253 

any other tongue has superior merits to your own or should 
enjoy greater privileges argues a sad want of patriotism. 
All the European movements of emancipation and unification 
of the last century have been accompanied by higher national 
consciousness and have meant keener national rivalries if not 
hatreds. The awakening of modern Russia was accompanied 
by fierce nationalistic strife. It was also in the usual order of 
things that after the Turks and Christians in the Ottoman 
Empire had combined to overthrow the despotism of Abdul 
Hamid the Second, their antagonisms towards one another 
should have soon become more acute, for they were relieved 
of the pressure that had kept down their vitality and desire for 
expansion. Like all such parties, the Young Turks have been 
ultra-nationalists . 

Everywhere in Europe to-day where we find two nation- 
alities in considerable numbers in the same state, the outlook 
is discouraging. In Russia and Germany, the minorities have 
been frankly oppressed ; in Austria-Hungary, the various peo- 
ples are in fierce antagonism with one another ; in Belgium, 
the Flemish movement, however justified, has threatened the 
future of the kingdom ; and even in Switzerland, where, thanks 
to a federal constitution and a splendid common patriotism 
and pride, representatives of three great nationalities have 
lived on an equal footing in such harmony as nowhere else, 
there has been increasing friction in the last few years between 
the French and the German elements. The circumstance 
that in the present war their respective sympathies are, as is 
natural, on the side of the belligerent whose language they 
speak, can hardly contribute to good feeling between themselves. 

But granting that it would be desirable that in the Europe 
of the future each national group should be as far as possible 
self-governing, there is an obvious limit to the principle. 
Under modern conditions, a state, and particularly an inland 
state, requires a certain size for independent political and 
economic existence. In these days of large countries, such 
isolated groups as the Saxons in Transylvania, the Slovaks 



254 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

in North Hungary, the Wends in the Lausitz, the Basques 
in France and Spain, cannot be expected to exist as inde- 
pendent communities; indeed they have no desire to. All 
they ask for is certain local privileges, but it is doubtful 
whether these can be preserved much longer. The future 
seems to offer little promise to small detached minorities, 
however historically or culturally interesting. 

The claims of historical possession cannot always be lightly 
dismissed. Has a people no right to maintain its supremacy 
in the homes and the lands that have come to it through long 
generations? If it has been too hospitable to strangers, is it 
therefore a fit subject for dismemberment or conquest? In 
any equitable territorial adjustment, the historical unity of a 
country may legitimately demand consideration. For instance, 
the Czechs in Bohemia do not desire an independence or 
greater self-government than would sever them from the 
frontier portions of their territory which have a German popu- 
lation. In like manner, to deprive Hungary of all the parts of 
the kingdom where the Magyars do not form the majority 
of the inhabitants would be to sin against a state which, 
though its boundaries may have varied, has had a unity and 
fixed abode in the same region for over nine hundred years, 
during which its history has counted many glorious pages. 

But by and large, accepting the principle of .nationality as 
representing legitimate aspirations which command our 
sympathy, it is interesting to see how some of them may be 
expected to fare in case of the decisive triumph of either 
side in the present war. 



If . . . the Allies are successful, Alsace-Lorraine will go 
back to France. Luxemburg also may be given to her or to 
Belgium as being too small to defend itself and too strategically 
important to be left in a position of neutrality which experience 
has shown is not respected. Schleswig-Holstein is in a dif- 
ferent situation. People who propose that it be handed back 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 255 

to Denmark are presumably ignorant of the fact that the Ger- 
mans in the duchies far outnumber the Danes, being over a 
million strong. That is to say, they would make up more than 
twenty -five per cent of the population of the enlarged Danish 
kingdom, and would be as restive under Danish rule as they 
were in the past when they so often revolted against it. Sooner 
or later they would return to Germany. On the other hand, 
the cession to Denmark of the Danish-speaking region of 
north Schleswig, as looked forward to in the Treaty of Prague 
in 1866, but never carried out, would be quite within the 
bounds of reason and right. 

The defeat of Austria would doubtless mean the building 
up of a greater Servia, including Bosnia, and if the defeat 
were complete, Croatia and all or most of Dalmatia and 
perhaps the Slovenian regions. If this happens, Bulgaria, with 
the aid and friendship of the Allies, may recover the larger 
part of Macedonia, which would be another satisfaction of the 
principle of nationality and of the desire of the inhabitants. 

No people, not even the Belgians, are more to be pitied 
in the present war than are the Poles. Not only is a great 
part of their country the fighting ground for huge armies 
and suffering terribly in the process, but they themselves, 
whatever their sympathies may be, are forced into the hosts 
on both sides and are killing each other at the behest of for- 
eign masters. It is at least some compensation that, which- 
ever side wins, the Poles may hope for an amelioration of 
their present lot and perhaps the revival of a Polish state — 
though hardly an independent one, and not in either case with 
the boundaries desired by Polish patriots. If the victory 
goes to Germany and Austria, it is quite likely we shall wit- 
ness a new kingdom of Poland as part of the federal empire 
of the Hapsburgs or under a Hapsburg prince. This king- 
dom would be made up of Galicia and of such part of Poland 
as could be taken away from Russia. To be sure, Germany 
would scarcely view the new state with favor on account 
of the attraction it would exercise on her own Polish 



256 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

subjects, and she certainly would not give up any of them for 
its sake. This Polish kingdom would also include a consider- 
able disaffected element, the Ruthenian or Little Russian 
population of the eastern half of Galicia, which in recent years 
has been growing increasingly anti-Polish in spite of its Polish 
aristocracy. On the other hand, Russia in the event of her 
success has promised an autonomous Poland to include and 
unite practically the whole Polish nation. This would mean, 
in addition to the strictly Polish provinces of Russia, much 
at least of the Polish parts of Prussia as well as western Galicia, 
but it would not include eastern Galicia, which would be 
treated as being Russian not Polish. Such a provision would 
not please the Polish upper class there, nor the Poles anywhere, 
and probably none too well the mass of the population, for 
to-day the language of the Little Russians enjoys greater 
rights in Austria than it does on the Muscovite side of the 
frontier, where it is treated as a mere dialect of Russian proper 
and suppressed as far as possible for fear it may endanger the 
unity of the national language. Besides that, the Little 
Russians in eastern Galicia belong not to the Greek Orthodox, 
but to the United Greek church, one which the Russian govern- 
ment has in the past treated as having no real right to exist. 
In the case of Rumania also, there are two opposite possi- 
bilities of expansion which have tempted ardent and acquisi- 
tive patriots. Had Rumania joined Germany and Austria 
in the war, as she would have done up to three years ago, and 
as her former king, it is said, still wished to do last summer, 
she might perhaps have acquired the province of Bessarabia, 
which was hers historically until 181 2, and where still about 
half the population are Rumanians. Should she now take 
side with the Allies, she will hope for the Austrian province 
of Bukowina (where a large percentage of the people are 
Rumanians), and a bit of southern Hungary as well as Transyl- 
vania. The case of Transylvania is peculiar. The Rumanians 
there make up not far from two thirds of the inhabitants, 
and they claim to be the oldest settlers though the claim is 



NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE 257 

disputed. Yet for the last nine hundred years, Transylvania 
has almost without interruption been a part of the kingdom of 
Hungary. The whole story of its past in that time, its rulers, 
its civilization, its articulate life, have been Hungarian, save 
in the regions where the German colonists of the twelfth 
century, the so-called Saxons, have had special privileges 
and have maintained their individuality. To every Magyar, 
Transylvania is as much an integral part of Hungary as Wales 
is of Great Britain or as Brittany of France. We have here a 
striking instance of the conflict between historical right and 
the predominance of nationality. 

Italy, too, has dallied with rival attractions. She has now 
apparently rejected once and for all those held out to her by 
her former partners ; that is, Tunis, where the Italian element 
is larger than the French, and Nice and Corsica, which she 
still regards as fundamentally Italian. On the other hand, she 
expects in return for assistance to the Allies or as a reward 
for mere friendly neutrality to obtain Italian-speaking terri- 
tory to the north and east of her; namely, the Trentino, 
Trieste, and perhaps the Dalmatian coast. But there are 
certain obstacles besides the military ones that may inter- 
fere with her desires. The Trentino, or Italian-speaking 
southern Tyrol, could be handed over to her with little diffi- 
culty, though she has no better historical or linguistic right 
to it than she has to the Swiss Canton of the Ticino. Still 
the preferences of the people count for something, and whereas 
the inhabitants of Ticino have no wish to become subjects of 
King Victor Emmanuel, most of the population of the Tren- 
tino would probably be glad to. With Trieste, the question 
is more complicated. The city would suffer economically by 
coming under Italian rule; and restricting ourselves to the 
question of nationality, we must remember that though in 
Trieste itself the greater part of the population is Italian, 
yet if we include with the city its natural background made 
up of the rest of the peninsula of Istria and the territory that 
connects it with Italy, we get a majority of Slavs. 



258 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

In Dalmatia the case is much worse. Most of the Dal- 
matian towns for centuries belonged to the republic of Ven- 
ice, and its atmosphere still lingers about them. Public 
opinion in Italy regards them as part of Italia Irredenta, 
and the casual traveler knowing a little Italian and no Slav 
shares that opinion. In actual fact, if the latest statistics 
are to be trusted, the Italians make up less than three per 
cent of the total population of Dalmatia, an absurdly insig- 
nificant minority on which to found nationalistic claims. 
They are in the majority only in the one town of Zara, and 
even there the rest of the district is Slav. Now, the times 
are past when Slavs were content with being the docile sub- 
jects of a superior Italian civilization. A greater Servia 
will claim Dalmatia, and likewise the territory of Trieste, on 
the ground of nationality; but Italy, although her own 
unification has been in the name of that principle, has shown 
that she is quite capable of paying no attention to it when 
it conflicts with her ambitions. Some day we shall hear 
more about the question of Italian versus Slav in the Adriatic, 
besides which we must not forget that the strongest geographi- 
cal and economic considerations would seem to indicate that 
the Germans cannot be permanently cut off from direct access 
to these waters. 

But all such speculations about the future have an element 
of futility in them. The great conflict now raging in Europe 
still has surprises in store for us, and when the time comes 
to fix the terms of peace, the rulers and statesmen who have 
to formulate and to agree to them will not be as free to fol- 
low their fancies as are irresponsible map-makers. Perchance 
when peace is at last made, it will be based on no principles 
except those of common exhaustion and of beati possidentes. 
But the fact that the rights, the aspirations, the dreams of so 
many nations and interesting nationalities, large and small, 
are now at stake is one reason why the present gigantic struggle 
makes such deep appeal to the imagination and the sympathies 
of all of us. 



FORCE AND PEACE 1 

Henry Cabot Lodge 

[Henry Cabot Lodge (1850- ) was educated at Harvard and has 
represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate since 1893. He 
is a distinguished statesman, a writer on historical-political subjects, 
best known for his lives of Washington and Hamilton, "Hero Tales from 
American History," and several volumes of essays and addresses. This 
vigorous discussion is, with the omission of a few paragraphs, a Commence- 
ment address delivered at Union College, Schenectady, New York, on 
June 9, 1915. By its thorough analysis and effective illustration of the 
basic principles of "preparedness" it brilliantly presents the viewpoint of 
an important section of American opinion.] 

In the general Commination service to which Carlyle 
devoted so much time and space he always found opportunity 
to hymn the praise of the strong, silent man who looked facts 
in the face. Very characteristically he dismissed with a sneer 
the most silent, perhaps, of all great men, one certainly who 
looked at the many hostile facts which he encountered in life 
with a steady gaze, undimmed by illusions, to a degree rarely 
equaled. I do not mean by this that Washington never 
spoke, never in speech or writing uttered his thoughts. Many 
volumes attest the supreme sufficiency of his dealings with 
all the crowding questions of war and peace which in such 
victorious manner he met and answered. But there was one 
subject upon which he held his peace, and that was himself. 
I once searched every line of his writings which have been 
printed, as well as those of his contemporaries, and all that 
could be found in regard to the man himself were a few sen- 
tences of his own capable of an inference, and elsewhere some 

1 From "War Addresses," 1915-191 7. Copyright, 191 7. Reprinted by 
special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers. 

259 



26o THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

stray anecdotes. We have his opinions, frank and free, on 
all the transactions of his life, but nothing about himself. 
There silence reigns, and hence he may be called in the truest 
sense the most silent of the great men of modern times. A 
very noble quality this, worthy of consideration in any age 
and especially in an age of much delivery of personal feel- 
ings and much self-advertising, where publication is easy and 
passing notoriety extremely cheap. From the many necessary 
words, however, written and spoken by this most silent 
man upon all the far-reaching business of his life and about 
the world of men and things which he touched at so many 
points, there emerge, very luminous and distinct, an unfail- 
ing power of looking facts, whether favorable or unfavorable, 
in the face, a fine freedom from illusions and complete refusal 
to admit self-deception or to attempt the deception of others. 
In these days when the readiness to accept words for deeds, 
language for action, and a false or maudlin sentimentality 
for true sentiment, one of the noblest and purest of human 
motives, — when, I repeat, the cheerful acceptance of these 
unrealities seems at least to be extremely prevalent, such 
veracity of mind and character as that possessed by Wash- 
ington would appear more than usually worthy of contempla- 
tion and imitation. 



How is peace to be established and maintained hereafter 
among the nations of the earth? One thing is certain, it 
cannot be done by words. Nothing will be accomplished by 
people who are sheltered under neutrality gathering outside 
the edges of the fight and from comfortable safety summon- 
ing the combatants to throw down their arms and make 
peace because war is filled with horrors and women are the 
mothers of men. The nations and the men now fighting, as 
they believe, for their lives and freedom and national exist- 
ence know all this better than any one else, and would heed 
such babble, if they heard it, no more than the twittering 



FORCE AND PEACE 261 

of birds. In our Civil War, when we were righting for our 
national life, England and France and other outsiders were 
not slow in telling us that the Union could not be saved) that 
the useless carnage ought to cease, that peace must be made 
at once. Except as an irritating impertinence we regarded 
such advice as of no more consequence than the squeaking 
of mice behind the wainscot when fire has seized upon the 
house. Neither present peace, nor established peace in the 
future for which we hope, is helped by fervent conversation 
among ourselves about the beauties of peace and the horrors 
of war, interspersed with virtuous exhortations to others, 
who are passing through the valley of the shadow, to give 
up all they are fighting for and accept the instructions of 
bystanders who are daring and sacrificing nothing and who 
have nothing directly at stake. Peace will not come in this 
way by vain shoutings nor by mere loudness in shrieking 
uncontested truths to a weary world. No men or women 
possessed of ordinary sense or human sympathies need argu- 
ments to convince them that peace among nations is a great 
good, to be sought for with all their strength, but the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of peace cannot be accomplished 
by language proclaiming the virtues of peace and demon- 
strating the horrors of war. The many excellent people who 
may be described as habitual if not professional advocates 
of peace appear to be satisfied with making and listening 
to speeches about it. They seem to think great advances 
are made if we put our official names to a series of perfectly 
empty and foolish agreements which it is charitable to describe 
as harmless follies, for they weaken and discredit every real 
treaty which seeks to promote international good-will and 
settle international differences. They are so vain and worth- 
less that, when the hour of stress came, no one would think 
it worth while even to tear them up. Treaty agreements 
looking to the peaceful settlement of international disputes, 
and which can be carried out, are valuable to the extent to 
which they go, but treaty agreements which go beyond the 



262 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

point of practical enforcement, which are not meant to be en- 
forced, and which have neither a sense of obligation nor force 
to sustain that obligation behind them, are simply injurious. 
If we are to secure our own peace and do our part toward 
the maintenance of world peace, we must put rhetoric, whether 
in speech or on paper, aside. We must refuse to be satisfied 
with illusions. We must refuse to deceive ourselves or others. 
We must pass by mere words and vague shows, and come 
clear-eyed to the facts and the realities. The dominant fact 
to-day, I repeat, is the physical force now unchained in this 
great war. Some people seem to think that if you can abolish 
force and the instruments of force you can put an end to the 
possibilities of war. Let us for a moment go to the roots of 
existing things. Let us make the last analysis. 

When I was a very young man I saw a large part of my na- 
tive city swept away by fire in a single night. The calamity 
brought with it an enormous destruction of property, of the 
accumulated savings of years and much consequent suffering, 
both direct and indirect. What was the cause of this destruc- 
tion and suffering ? There was only one — fire. Not fire from 
the heaven above or the earth beneath, but fire produced and 
used by man, set loose without control. The abolition of fire 
would undoubtedly have prevented a repetition of this dis- 
aster, but no one suggested it. The impossibility of attempt- 
ing to stop the destruction of life and property through fire 
by aboHshing fire itself was as apparent as its absurdity. 
Somewhere in the dim, unwritten history of man upon earth 
a great genius, perhaps several great geniuses, discovered the 
production and control of fire. In the earliest traces of man 
there is, I think, as yet no proof of his existence without fire, 
and yet we know that at some period he must have discovered 
its production and control. Even when we come to the little 
fragment of time covered by man's recorded history, we find 
that the thought of the production and control of fire as the 
greatest of discoveries still lingered in the human mind and 
found its expression in symbolism of the beautiful Promethean 



FORCE AND PEACE 263 

myth. Fire, therefore, has probably been with man as his 
servant for a period which could only be expressed in the 
vast terms of geology. In large measure, society and civiliza- 
tion rest upon the use of fire. Without it, great spaces of the 
earth's surface would become not only useless to man but 
uninhabitable. Without it, the huge and intricate fabric 
of modern civilization in its present form would not exist. 
Therefore, no argument is needed to convince men that the 
miseries and misfortunes caused by uncontrolled fire cannot 
be escaped by the abolition of fire itself. Relief must be 
sought, not in abolition, but in a better and wiser control 
which will render it difficult at least for man's best servant 
at any time to become his master. It is unchained force, with 
the dread accompaniments of science, which is to-day destroy- 
ing life and limb, happiness, industry, property, and the joys 
and beauties of the art and devotion of the dead centuries. 
Is the terrible problem here presented to be solved by the 
abolition of the physical force possessed by nations ? Go back 
again to the dark beginnings and study the comparatively 
few years, eight or ten thousand at the outside, of which we 
may be said to have a record. 

In the dim light of that remote dawn we see men engaged 
in an unending conflict with the forces of nature, struggling 
with the forces of nature, struggling with the wilderness, with 
wild beasts, with hot and cold, and continually fighting with 
each other. Gradually they emerge in tribes with leaders, 
and then come states, communities, kingdoms, empires. 
But among all these confused events which make up history 
we find, I think, that the one fact which marks the develop- 
ment of every organized society, whether rude or compli- 
cated, of every political entity, whether great or small, is 
the substitution of the will of the community and the protec- 
tion of the community for the will of the individual and for 
the self-protection which each man naturally exercises. The 
one unfailing mark of what, for lack of a better word, we call 
> civilization, is this substitution of the force of the community, 



264 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

embodied in law and administered by what we describe as 
government, for the uncontrolled sporadic force of each indi- 
vidual member of the community. Wherever man is left 
to his own protection and his own defense, there is nothing 
possible but personal fighting and general anarchy. The 
man possessed of the greatest physical force and the most 
effective weapons is the best protected. About him others 
gather and submit to his leadership and give him their sup- 
port in return for his protection. Then we have the predatory 
band which found its highest expression in the feudal system. 
Gradually one band or lordship conquers or unites with itself 
other bands, and they establish control over a certain terri- 
tory ; a state emerges, and the process is repeated on a larger 
scale by the conquest or union of other states. Physical is 
supplemented by intellectual force and we have at last the 
kingdom, the great republic, or the mighty empire. But 
under it all lies the replacement of the scattered force of the 
individual by the consolidated force of the community, and 
power, order, commerce, art, and peace rest in the last analysis 
upon the force of the community expressed in government 
of some sort, such government being merely its instrument 
and manifestation. You may carry your inquiry across the 
whole range of history and over the earliest human societies 
of which we have knowledge, to the vigilance committees 
of the Far West, and you will find that law, order, and peace 
were brought about by men coming together and exercising 
the united force of the community, great or small, in order 
to put an end to the chaos and disorders of uncontrolled force 
exercised by each individual. When the civilization and the 
society reach a high point of organization, the underlying 
force upon which the entire social and political fabric rests 
is exerted and is often effective through what may be called 
merely a symbol. The longest period of general peace cover- 
ing a large region of the earth of which we have knowledge 
in historic times was probably that of the Roman Empire, 
which endured for some three centuries. There was righting 



FORCE AND PEACE 265 

on the widely extended frontiers, at intervals diminishing 
in length as the end approached. After the decline began 
there were internal wars also at intervals with the imperial 
purple as the prize, but on the whole through the first three 
centuries of our era the general condition of the Roman Empire 
and throughout most of its extent was one of peace. That 
time is still referred to as the period of the Pax Romana. 

In his romance of the "Last Days of Pompeii," Bulwer 
makes a dramatic point of the Roman sentry motionless at 
his post while the darkness and the flame and the burning 
flood were rushing down upon the doomed city. That solitary 
sentry was the symbol of the force of the Roman Empire. 
Peace, order, and law reigned throughout all western Europe, 
but it was the gleam upon the sword and corselet of the Roman 
legionary which made men realize that behind that law and 
peace and order was the irresistible force of the Empire of 
Rome. Let us take a more homely illustration. We have 
all seen in London and New York police officers stationed 
at points where the traffic is densest regulating and guiding 
its movement by merely raising one hand. They would be 
perfectly incapable of stopping the vehicles carrying on that 
traffic, by their own physical force. It could pass over them 
and destroy them in a moment, and yet it is all governed by 
the gesture of one man. The reason is simple ; the policeman 
is the symbol of the force of the community against which 
no individual force can prevail, and of this the great mass 
of individuals are thoroughly if unconsciously aware. Law 
is the written will of the community. The constable, the 
policeman, the soldier, is the symbol of the force which gives 
sanction to law and without which it would be worthless. 
Abolish the force which maintains order in every village, 
town, and city in the civilized world and you would not have 
peace — you would have riot, anarchy, and destruction ; 
the criminal, the violent, and the reckless would dominate 
until the men of order and the lovers of peace united and re- 
stored the force of the community which had been swept 



266 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

away. It is all obvious enough, it all rests on human nature, 
and if there was not somewhere an organized force which 
belonged to the whole community there would be neither peace 
nor order anywhere. No one has suggested, not even the most 
ardent advocates of peace, that the police of our cities should 
be abolished on the theory that an organization of armed men 
whose duty it is to maintain order, even if they are compelled 
often to wound and sometimes to kill for that purpose, are 
by their mere existence an incitement to crime and violence. 
If order, peace, and civilization in a town, city, or state, rest 
as they do rest in the last analysis, upon force, upon what 
does the peace of a nation depend? It must depend, and it 
can only depend, upon the ability of the nation to maintain 
and defend its own peace at home and abroad. Turn to the 
Constitution of the United States. In the brief preamble 
one of the chief purposes of the Constitution is set down as 
provision for the " common defense." In the grant of powers 
to Congress one of the first powers conferred is to provide 
for the "common defense of the United States." For this 
purpose they are given specific powers : to raise and support 
armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to provide for calling 
forth the militia, suppressing insurrections and repelling inva- 
sions. The States are forbidden to engage in war unless ac- 
tually invaded, and the United States is bound to protect 
each of them against invasion and, on their request, to protect 
them also against domestic violence. In other words, the 
Constitution provides for the maintenance of order at home 
and peace abroad through the physical force of the United 
States. The conception of the Constitution is that domestic 
order as well as peace with other nations rests upon the force 
of the nation. Of the soundness of this proposition there can 
be no doubt, I think, in the mind of any reasonable man. This 
obvious principle embodied in the Constitution and recognized 
by every organized government in the world is too often over- 
looked at the present moment in the clamor against armament. 
The people who urge the disarmament of one nation in an 



FORCE AND PEACE 267 

armed world confuse armament and preparation with the 
actual power upon which peace depends. They take the 
manifestation for the cause. Armament is merely the instru- 
ment by which the force of the community is manifested and 
made effective, just as the policeman is the manifestation of 
the force of the municipal community upon which local order 
rests. The fact that armies and navies are used in war does 
not make them the cause of war, any more than maintaining 
a fire in a grate to prevent the dwellers in the house from suf- 
fering from cold warrants the abolition of fire because where 
fire gets beyond control it is a destructive agent. Alexander 
the Great was bent on conquest, and he created the best 
army in the world at that time, not to preserve the peace of 
Macedonia, but for the purpose of conquering other nations, 
to which purpose he applied his instrument. The wars which 
followed were not due to the Macedonian phalanx, but to 
Alexander. The good or the evil of national armament de- 
pends, not on its existence or its size, but upon the purpose 
for which it is created and maintained. Great military and 
naval forces created for purposes of conquest are used in the 
war which the desire of conquest causes. They do not in 
themselves cause war. Armies and navies organized to main- 
tain peace serve the ends of peace because there is no such 
incentive to war as a rich, undefended, and helpless country, 
which by its condition invites aggression. The grave ob- 
jections to overwhelming and exhausting armaments are 
economic. A general reduction of armaments is not only desir- 
able, but is something to be sought for with the utmost earnest- 
ness. But for one nation to disarm and leave itself defenseless 
in an armed world is a direct incentive and invitation to war. 
The danger to the peace of the world, then, lies not in arma- 
ment, which is a manifestation, but in the purposes for which 
the armament was created. A knife is frequently dangerous 
to human life, but there would be no sense in abolishing knives, 
because the danger depends solely on the purpose or passion 
of the individual in whose hand the knife is and not upon the 



268 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

fact that the knife exists. The peace of a nation depends in 
the last resort, like domestic order, upon the force of the 
community and upon the ability of the community to main- 
tain peace, assuming that the nation lives up to its obligations, 
seeks no conquest, and wishes only to be able to repel aggres- 
sion and invasion. If a nation fulfills strictly all its inter- 
national obligations and seeks no conquest and has no desire 
to wrong any other nation, great or small, the danger of war 
can come only through the aggression of others, and that 
aggression will never be made if it is known that the peace- 
loving nation is ready to repel it. The first step, then, toward 
the maintenance of peace is for each nation to maintain its 
peace with the rest of the world by its own honorable and 
right conduct and by such organization and preparation as 
will enable it to defend its peace. 

This should be our policy. We should show the world 
that democracy, government by the people, makes for peace, 
in contrast to the government of a military autocracy which 
makes for war. We should demonstrate this by our conduct, 
by justice in our dealings with other nations, by readiness 
to make any sacrifices for the right and stern refusal to do 
wrong ; by deeds, not words, and finally by making the whole 
world understand that while we seek no conquests we are 
able to repel any aggression or invasion from without for the 
very reason that we love peace and mean to maintain it. 
We should never forget that if democracy is not both able 
and ready to defend itself, it will go down in subjection before 
military autocracy because the latter is then the more efficient. 
We must bear constantly in mind that from the conflict which 
now convulses the world there may possibly come events 
which would force us to fight with all our strength to preserve 
our freedom, our democracy, and our national life. But this 
concerns ourselves and will have only the slow-moving influ- 
ence of example. What can be done now? What can we do 
in the larger sense toward securing and maintaining the peace 
of the world? This is a much more difficult question, but 



FORCE AND PEACE 269 

turn it back and forth as we may there is no escape from the 
proposition that the peace of the world can be maintained 
only, as the peace and order of a single community are main- 
tained, as the peace of a single nation is maintained, by the 
force which united nations are willing to put behind the peace 
and order of the world. Nations must unite as men unite 
in order to preserve peace and order. The great nations must 
be so united as to be able to say to any single country, you 
must not go to war, and they can only say that effectively 
when the country desiring war knows that the force which 
the united nations place behind peace is irresistible. We have 
done something in advancing the settlement by arbitration 
of many minor questions which in former times led to wars 
and reprisals, although the points of difference were essen- 
tially insignificant, but as human nature is at present consti- 
tuted and the world is at present managed there are certain 
questions which no nation would submit voluntarily to the 
arbitration of any tribunal, and the attempt to bring such 
questions within the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal not 
only fails in its purpose, but discredits arbitration and the 
treaties by which the impossible is attempted. In differences 
between individuals the decision of the court is final, because 
in the last resort the entire force of the community is behind 
the court decision. In differences between nations which go 
beyond the limited range of arbitrable questions, peace can 
be maintained only by putting behind it the force of united 
nations determined to uphold it and to prevent war. No one 
is more conscious than I of the enormous difficulties which 
beset such a solution or such a scheme, but if we are to pass 
beyond the limits of voluntary arbitration, it is in this direction 
alone that we can find hope for the maintenance of the world's 
peace and the avoidance of needless wars. It may well be 
that it is impossible, that we cannot go beyond voluntary 
arbitration. Even if we could establish such a union of na- 
tions, there would be some wars that could not be avoided, 
but there might certainly be others which could be prevented. 



270 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

It may be easily said that this idea, which is not a new one, 
is impracticable, but it is better than the idea that war can 
be stopped by language, by speech-making, by vain agree- 
ments which no one would carry out when the stress came, 
by denunciations of war and laudations of peace, in which 
all men agree ; for these methods are not only impracticable, 
but impossible and barren of all hope of real result. It may 
seem Utopian at this moment to suggest a union of civilized 
nations in order to put a controlling force behind the mainte- 
nance of peace and international order, but it is through the 
aspiration for perfection, through the search for Utopias, that 
the real advances have been made. At all events, it is along 
this path that we must' travel if we are to attain in any meas- 
ure to the end we all desire of peace upon earth. It is at least 
a great, a humane purpose to which, in these days of death 
and suffering, of misery and sorrow among so large a portion 
of mankind, we might well dedicate ourselves. We must 
begin the work with the clear understanding that our efforts 
will fail if they are tainted with the thought of personal or 
political profit or with any idea of self-interest or self-glorifica- 
tion. We cannot possibly succeed in any measure if we mix 
up plans for future peace with attempts to end this war now 
raging. We must be content to work within rigid limitations. 
We may not now succeed even in this restricted way, but I 
believe that in the slow process of the years others who come 
after us may attach to it some result not without value. At 
least we can feel that the effort and the sacrifice which we 
make will not be in vain when the end in sight is noble, when 
we are striving to help mankind and lift the heaviest burdens 
from suffering humanity. 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 1 

A. Lawrence Lowell 

[A. Lawrence Lowell (1856- ) was educated at Harvard, taught 
political science there from 1897 to 1909^ and has since been its president. 
His chief writings are " Governments and Parties in Continental Europe" 
(1896) and "The Government of England" (1908). The present selec- 
tion illustrates very well the careful working out of an argument in favor 
of a cause, with emphasis upon the most serious objection to it.] 

In spite of its ominous sound, the suggestion of a league of 
nations to enforce peace has no connection with any effort 
to stop the present war. It is aimed solely at preventing fu- 
ture conflicts after the terrific struggle now raging has come 
to an end ; and yet this is not a bad time for people in private 
life to bring forward proposals of such a nature. Owing to the 
vast number of soldiers under arms, to the proportion of men 
and women in the warring countries who suffer acutely, to 
the extent of the devastation and misery, it is probable that, 
whatever the result may be, the people of all nations will be 
more anxious to prevent the outbreak of another war than 
ever before in the history of the world. The time is not yet 
ripe for governments to take action, but it is ripe for public 
discussion of practicable means to reduce the danger of future 
breaches of international peace. 

The nations of the world to-day are in much the position 
of frontier settlements in America half a century ago, before 
orderly government was set up. The men there were in the 
main well disposed, but in the absence of an authority that 
could enforce order, each man, feeling no other security from 
attack, carried arms which he was prepared to use if danger 
threatened. The first step, when affrays became unbearable, 

1 From Atlantic Monthly, September, 1915. Reprinted by permission. 

271 



272 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

was the formation of a vigilance committee, supported by the 
enrollment of all good citizens, to prevent men from shooting 
one another and to punish offenders. People did not wait for 
a gradual improvement by the preaching of higher ethics 
and a better civilization. They felt that violence must be 
met by force, and when the show of force was strong enough, 
violence ceased. In time the vigilance committee was re- 
placed by the policeman and by the sheriff with the posse 
comitatus. The policeman and the sheriff maintain order 
because they have the bulk of the community behind them, 
and no country has yet reached, or is likely for an indefinite 
period to reach, such a state of civilization that it can wholly 
dispense with the police. 

Treaties for the arbitration of international disputes are 
good. They have proved an effective method of settling ques- 
tions that would otherwise have bred ill-feeling without 
directly causing war ; but when passion runs high, and deep- 
rooted interests or sentiments are at stake, there is need of 
the sheriff with his posse to enforce the obligation. 

There are, no doubt, differences in the conception of justice 
and right, divergencies of civilization, so profound that people 
will fight over them, and face even the prospect of disaster in 
war rather than submit. Yet even in such cases it is worth 
while to postpone the conflict, to have a public discussion of 
the question at issue before an impartial tribunal, and thus 
give to the people of the countries involved a chance to con- 
sider, before hostilities begin, whether the risk and suffering 
of war are really worth while. No sensible man expects to 
abolish wars altogether, but we ought to seek to reduce the 
probability of war as much as possible. It is on these grounds 
that the suggestion has been put forth of a league of nations 
to enforce peace. 

Without attempting to cover details of operation (which 
are, indeed, of vital importance and will require careful study 
by experts in international law and diplomacy), the proposal 
contains four points stated as general objects. The first is 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 273 

that before resorting to arms the members of the league shall 
submit disputes with one another, if justiciable, to an inter- 
national tribunal; second, that in like manner they shall 
submit non-justiciable questions — that is, such as cannot 
be decided on the basis of strict international law — to an 
international council of conciliation, which shall recommend 
a fair and amicable solution; third, that if any member of 
the league wages war against another before submitting the 
question in dispute to the tribunal or council, all the other 
members shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and 
military forces against the state that so breaks the peace; 
and fourth, that the signatory powers shall endeavor to codify 
and improve the rules of international law. 

The kernel of the proposal, the featurejn which it differs 
from other plans, lies in the third point, obliging all the mem- 
bers of the league to declare war on any member violating 
the pact of peace. This is the provision that provokes both 
adherence and opposition ; and at first it certainly gives one 
a shock that a people should be asked to pledge itself to go 
to war over a quarrel which is not of its making, in which it 
has no interest, and in which it may believe that substantial 
justice lies on the other side. If, indeed, the nations of the 
earth could maintain complete isolation, could pursue each 
its own destiny without regard to the rest ; if they were not 
affected by a war between two others or liable to be drawn 
into it ; if, in short, ithere were no overwhelming common 
interest in securing universal peace, the provision would be 
intolerable. It would be as bad as the liability of an individ- 
ual to take part in the posse comitatus of a community with 
which he had nothing in common. But in every civilized 
country the public force is employed to prevent any man, 
however just his claim, from vindicating his own right with 
his own hand instead of going to law, and every citizen is 
bound when needed to assist in preventing him, because that 
is the only way to restrain private war, and the maintenance 
of order is of paramount importance for every one. Surely 



274 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

the family of nations has a like interest in restraining war 
between states. 

It will be observed that the members of the league are not 
to bind themselves to enforce the decision of the tribunal or 
the award of the council of conciliation. That may come in 
the remote future, but it is no part of this proposal. It would 
be imposing obligations far greater than the nations can 
reasonably be expected to assume at the present day; for 
the conceptions of international morality and fair play are 
still so vague and divergent that a nation can hardly bind 
itself to wage war on another, with which it has no quarrel, 
to enforce a decision or a recommendation of whose justice 
or wisdom it may not be itself heartily convinced. The pro- 
posal goes no further than obliging all the members to pre- 
vent, by a threat of immediate war, any breach of the public 
peace before the matter in dispute has been submitted to 
arbitration; and this is neither unreasonable nor imprac- 
ticable. There are many questions, especially of a non- 
justiciable nature, on which we should not be willing to bind 
ourselves to accept the decision of an arbitration, and where 
we should regard compulsion by armed intervention of the 
rest of the world as outrageous. Take, for example, the ques- 
tion of Asiatic immigration, or a claim that the Panama Canal 
ought to be an unfortified neutral highway, or the desire by 
a European power to take possession of Colombia. But we 
ought not, in the interest of universal peace, to object to 
making a public statement of our position in these matters 
at a court or council before resorting to arms; and in fact 
the treaty between the United States and England, ratified 
on November 14, 1914, provides that all disputes between 
the high contracting parties, of every nature whatsoever, 
shall, failing other methods of adjustment, be referred for 
investigation and report to a permanent international com- 
mission, with a stipulation that neither country shall declare 
war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before 
the report is submitted. 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 275 

What is true of this country is true of others. To agree to 
abide by the result of an arbitration, on every non- justiciable 
question of every nature whatsoever, on pain of compulsion 
in any form by the whole world, would involve a greater 
cession of sovereignty than nations would now be willing to 
concede. This appears, indeed, perfectly clearly from the 
discussions at the Hague Conference of 1907. But to exclude 
differences that do not turn on questions of international law 
from the cases in which a state must present the matter to a 
tribunal or council of conciliation before beginning hostilities, 
would leave very little check upon the outbreak of war. 
Almost every conflict between European nations for more 
than half a century has been based upon some dissension 
which could not be decided by strict rules of law, and in 
which a violation of international law or of treaty rights has 
usually not even been used as an excuse. This was true of the 
war between France and Austria in 1859, an(1 , i n substance, 
of the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866. It was true 
of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, of the Russo-Turkish 
War in 1876, of the Balkan War against Turkey in 191 2, and 
of the present war. 

No one will claim that a league to enforce peace, such as is 
proposed, would wholly prevent war, but it would greatly 
reduce the probability of hostilities. It would take away the 
advantage of surprise, of catching the enemy unprepared for 
a sudden attack. It would give a chance for public opinion 
on the nature of the controversy to be formed throughout the 
world and in the militant country. The latter is of great im- 
portance, for the moment war is declared argument about 
its merits is at once stifled. Passion runs too high for calm 
debate, and patriotism forces people to support their govern- 
ment. But a trial before an international tribunal would give 
time for discussion while emotion is not yet highly inflamed. 
Men opposed to war would be able to urge its injustice, to 
ask whether, after all, the object is worth the sacrifice, and 
they would get a hearing from their fellow citizens which 



276 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

they cannot get after war begins. The mere delay, the interval 
for consideration, would be an immense gain for the prospect 
of a peaceful settlement. 

In this connection it may be of interest to recall the way 
in which the medieval custom of private war was abolished 
in England. It was not done at one step, but gradually, by 
preventing men from avenging their own wrongs before going 
to court. The trial by battle long remained a recognized part 
of judicial procedure, but only after the case had been pre- 
sented to the court, and only in accordance with judicial 
forms. This had the effect of making the practice far less 
common, and of limiting it to the principals in the quarrel 
instead of involving a general breach of the peace in which 
their retainers and friends took part. Civilization was still too 
crude to give up private war, but the arm of the law and the 
force in the hands of the crown were strong enough to delay 
a personal conflict until the case had been presented to court. 
Without such a force the result could not have been attained. 

Every one will admit this in the case of private citizens, 
but many people shrink from the use of international force 
to restrain war ; some of them on the principle of strict non- 
resistance, that any taking of life in war cannot be justified, 
no matter what its purpose or effect. Such people have the 
most lofty moral ideals, but these are not a part of true 
statesmanship, unless they aim at the total welfare which 
may require the attacking of evils even by forcible means. 
Many years ago when an Atlantic steamship was wrecked, 
it was said that some of the crew made a rush for the boats, 
beating the passengers off, and that the captain, who was 
urged to restore order by shooting a mutineer, replied that 
he was too near eternity to take life. The result was a far 
greater loss of life than would have been suffered had he re- 
stored order by force. Probably no man with the instincts 
of a statesman would defend his conduct to-day. He was not 
a coward, but his sentiments unfitted him for a responsible 
post in an emergency. 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 277 

Most people who have been thinking seriously about the 
maintenance of peace are tending to the opinion that a sanc- 
tion of some kind is needed to enforce the observance of 
treaties and of agreements for arbitration. Among the meas- 
ures proposed has been that of an international police force, 
under the control of a central council which could use it to 
preserve order throughout the world. At present such a plan 
seems visionary. The force would have to be at least large 
enough to cope with the army that any single nation could 
put into the field, — under existing conditions let us say five 
millions of men fully equipped and supplied with artillery 
and ammunition for a campaign of several months. These 
troops need not be under arms, or quartered near The Hague, 
but they must be thoroughly trained and ready to be called 
out at short notice. Practically that would entail yearly 
votes of the legislative bodies of each of the nations supply- 
ing a quota ; and if any of them failed to make the necessary 
appropriation, there would be great difficulty in preventing 
others from following its example. The whole organization 
would, therefore, be in constant danger of going to pieces. 

But quite apart from the practical difficulties in the perma- 
nent execution of such a plan, let us see how it would affect 
the United States. The amount of the contingents of the 
various countries would be apportioned with some regard to 
population, wealth, and economic resources ; and if the total 
were five million men, our quota on a moderate estimate 
might be five hundred thousand men. Is it conceivable that 
the United States would agree to keep anything like that 
number drilled, equipped, and ready to take the field on 
the order of an international council composed mainly of 
foreign nations? Of course it will be answered that these 
figures are exaggerated, because any such plan will be ac- 
companied by a reduction in armaments. But that is an 
easier thing to talk about than to effect, and especially to 
maintain. One must not forget that the existing system of 
universal military compulsory service on the continent of 



278 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

Europe arose from Napoleon's attempt to limit the size of 
the Prussian army. He would be a bold or sanguine man 
who should assert that any treaty to limit armaments could 
not in like manner be evaded ; and however much they were 
limited, the quantity of troops to be held at the disposal of 
a foreign council would of necessity be large, while no nation 
would be willing to pledge for the purpose the whole of its 
military force. Such a plan may be practicable in some re- 
mote future when the whole world is a vast federation under 
a central government, but that would seem to be a matter 
for coming generations, not for the men of our day. 

Moreover, the nations whose troops were engaged in fight- 
ing any country would inevitably find themselves at war with 
that country. 

One cannot imagine saying to some foreign state, "Our 
troops are killing yours, they are invading your land, we are 
supplying them with recruits and munitions of war, but 
otherwise we are at peace with you. You must treat us as 
a neutral, and accord to our citizens, to their commerce and 
property, all the rights of neutrality." In short the plan of 
an international police force involves all the consequences 
of the proposal of a league to enforce peace, with other com- 
plex provisions extremely hard to execute. 

A suggestion more commonly made is that the members 
of the league of nations, instead of pledging themselves ex- 
plicitly to declare war forthwith against any of their number 
that commits a breach of the peace, should agree to hold at 
once a conference, and take such measures — diplomatic, 
economic, or military — as may be necessary to prevent war. 
The objection to this is that it weakens very seriously the 
sanction. Conferences are apt to shrink from decisive action. 
Some of the members are timid, others want delay, and much 
time is consumed in calling the body together and in dis- 
cussions after it meets. Meanwhile the war may have broken 
out, and be beyond control. It is much easier to prevent a 
fire than to put it out. The country that is planning war is 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 279 

likely to think it has friends in the conference, or neighbors 
that it can intimidate, who will prevent any positive decision 
until the fire is burning. Even if the majority decides on 
immediate action, the minority is not bound thereby. One 
great power refuses to take part; a second will not do so 
without her ; the rest hesitate, and nothing is done to prevent 
the war. 

A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a league 
to enforce peace by no means excludes it ; but the important 
matter, the effective principle, is that every member of the 
league should know that whether a conference meets or not, 
or whatever action it may take or fail to take, all the members 
of the league have pledged themselves to declare war forth- 
with on any member that commits a breach of the peace 
before submitting its case to the international tribunal or 
council of conciliation. Such a pledge, and such a pledge 
alone, can have the strong deterrent influence, and thus fur- 
nish the sanction that is needed. Of course the pledge may 
not be kept. Like other treaties it may be broken by the 
parties to it. Nations are composed of human beings with 
human weaknesses, and one of these is a disinclination to 
perform an agreement when it involves a sacrifice. Never- 
theless, nations, like men, often do have enough sense of 
honor, of duty, or of ultimate self-interest, to carry out their 
contracts at no little immediate sacrifice. They are certainly 
more likely to do a thing if they have pledged themselves to 
it than if they have not ; and any nation would be running a 
terrible risk that went to war in the hope that the other mem- 
bers of the league would break their pledges. 

The same objection applies to another alternative proposed 
in place of an immediate resort to military force : that is the 
use of economic pressure, by a universal agreement, for 
example, to have no commercial intercourse with the nation 
breaking the peace. A threat of universal boycott is, no 
doubt, formidable, but by no means so formidable as a threat 
of universal war. A large country with great natural resources 



280 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

which has determined to make war, might be willing to face 
commercial non-intercourse with the other members of the 
league during hostilities, when it would not for a moment 
contemplate the risk of righting them. A threat, for example, 
by England, France, and Germany to stop all trade with the 
United States might or might not have prevented our going 
to war with Spain; but a declaration that they would take 
part with all their armies and navies against us would cer- 
tainly have done so. 

It has often been pointed out that the threat of general 
non-intercourse would bear much more hardly on some 
countries than on others. That may not in itself be a fatal 
objection, but a very serious consideration arises from the 
fact that there would be a premium on preparation for war. 
A nation which had accumulated vast quantities of munitions, 
food, and supplies of all kinds might afford to disregard it; 
while another less fully prepared could not. 

Moreover, economic pressure, although urged as a milder 
measure, is in fact more difficult to apply and maintain. A 
declaration of war is a single act, and when made sustains 
itself by the passion it inflames; while commercial non- 
intercourse is a continuous matter, subject to constant opposi- 
tion exerted in an atmosphere relatively cool. Our manu- 
facturers would complain bitterly at being deprived of dye- 
stuffs and other chemical products on account of a quarrel 
in which we had no interest ; the South would suffer severely 
by the loss of a market for cotton ; the shipping firms and the 
exporters and importers of all kinds would be gravely injured ; 
and all these interests would bring to bear upon Congress a 
pressure well-nigh irresistible. The same would be true of 
every other neutral country, a fact that would be perfectly 
well known to the intending belligerent and reduce its fear of 
a boycott. 

But, it is said, why not try economic pressure first, and, if 
that fails, resort to military force, instead of inflicting at once 
on unoffending members of the league the terrible calamity of 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 281 

war? What do we mean by "if that fails"? Do we mean, 
if, in spite of the economic pressure, the war breaks out ? But 
then the harm is done, the fire is ablaze and can be put out 
only by blood. The object of the league is not to chastise a 
country guilty of breaking the peace, but to prevent the out- 
break of war, and to prevent it by the immediate prospect of 
such appalling consequences to the offender that he will not 
venture to run the risk. If a number of great powers were to 
pledge themselves, with serious intent, to wage war jointly 
and severally on any one of their members that attacked 
another before submitting the case to arbitration, it is in 
the highest degree improbable that the casus f&deris would 
ever occur, while any less drastic provision would be far less 
effective. 

An objection has been raised to the proposal for a league 
to enforce peace on the ground that it has in the past often 
proved difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of two 
belligerents began a war. The criticism is serious, and pre- 
sents a practical difficulty, grave but probably not insur- 
mountable. The proposal merely lays down a general prin- 
ciple, and if adopted, the details would have to be worked out 
very fully and carefully in a treaty, which would specify the 
acts that would constitute the waging of war by one member 
upon another. These would naturally be, not the mere creat- 
ing of apprehension, but specific acts, such as a declaration 
of war, invasion of territory, the use of force at sea not dis- 
owned within forty-eight hours, or an advance into a region 
in dispute. This last is an especially difficult point, but those 
portions of the earth's surface in which different nations have 
conflicting claims are growing less decade by decade. 

It must be remembered that the cases which would arise 
under a league of peace are not like those which have arisen 
in the past, where one nation is determined to go to war and 
merely seeks to throw the moral responsibility on the other 
while getting the advantage of actually beginning hostilities. 
It is a case where each will strive to avoid the specific acts 



282 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

of war that may involve the penalty. The reader may have 
seen, in a country where personal violence is severely pun- 
ished, two men shaking their fists in each other's faces, each 
trying to provoke the other to strike the first blow; and no 
fight after all. 

There are many agreements in private business which are 
not easy to embody in formal contracts; agreements where, 
as in this case, the execution of the terms calls for immediate 
action, and where redress after an elaborate trial of the facts 
affords no real reparation. But if the object sought is good, 
men do not condemn it on account of the difficulty in devis- 
ing provisions that will accomplish the result desired; cer- 
tainly not until they have tried to devise them. It may, 
indeed, prove impossible to draft a code of specific acts that 
will cover the ground; it may be impracticable to draft it 
so as to avoid issues of fact that can be determined only after 
a long sifting of evidence, which would come too late ; but 
surely that is no reason for failure to make the attempt. 
We are not making a treaty among nations. We are merely 
putting forward a suggestion for reducing war, which seems 
to merit consideration. 

A second difficulty that will sometimes arise is the rule of 
conduct to be followed pending the presentation of the ques- 
tion to the international tribunal. The continuance or cessa- 
tion of the acts complained of may appear to be, and may 
even be in fact, more important than the final decision. This 
has been brought to our attention forcibly by the sinking of 
the Lusitania. We should have done very wisely to submit 
to arbitration the question of the right of submarines to 
torpedo merchant ships without warning, provided Germany 
abandoned the practice pending the arbitration; and Ger- 
many would probably not have refused to submit the ques- 
tion to a tribunal on the understanding that the practice was 
to continue until the decision was rendered, because by that 
time the war would be over. This difficulty is inherent in 
every plan for the arbitration of international disputes, 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 283 

although more serious in a league whose members bind them- 
selves to prevent by force the outbreak of war. It would be 
necessary to give the tribunal summary authority to decree 
a modus vivendi, to empower it, like a court of equity, to 
issue a temporary injunction. 

In short, the proposal for a league to enforce peace cannot 
meet all possible contingencies. It cannot prevent all future 
wars, nor does any sensible person believe that any plan can 
do so in the present state of civilization. But it can prevent 
some wars that would otherwise take place, and if it does 
that, it will have done much good. 

People have asked how such a league would differ from the 
Triple Alliance or Triple Entente, — whether it would not be 
nominally a combination for peace which might in practice 
have quite a different effect. But in fact its object is quite 
contrary to those alliances. They are designed to protect 
their members against outside powers. This is intended to 
insure peace among the members themselves. If it grew 
strong enough, by including all the great powers, it might 
well insist on universal peace by compelling the outsiders to 
come in. But that is not its primary object, which is simply 
to prevent its members from going to war with one another. 
No doubt if several great nations, and some of the smaller 
ones, joined it, and if it succeeded in preserving constant 
friendly relations among its members, there would grow up 
among them a sense of solidarity which would make any out- 
side power chary of attacking one of them; and, what is 
more valuable, would make outsiders want to join it. But 
there is little use in speculating about probabilities. It is 
enough if such a league were a source of enduring peace 
among its own members. 

How about our own position in the United States? The 
proposal is a radical and subversive departure from the 
traditional policy of our country. Would it be wise for us 
to be parties to such an agreement ? At the threshold of such 
a discussion one thing is clear. If we are not willing to urge 



284 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

our own government to join a movement for peace, we have 
no business to discuss any plan for the purpose. It is worse 
than futile, it is an impertinence, for Americans to advise the 
people of Europe how they ought to conduct their affairs if 
we have nothing in common with them; to suggest to them 
conventions with burdens which are well enough for them, but 
which we are not willing to share. If our peace organizations 
are not prepared to have us take part in the plans they devise, 
they had better disband, or confine their discussions to Pan- 
American questions. 

To return to the question : would it be wise for the United 
States to make so great a departure from its traditional policy ? 
The wisdom of consistency lies in adherence to a principle so 
long as the conditions upon which it is based remain un- 
changed. But the conditions that affect the relations of 
America to Europe have changed greatly in the last hundred 
and twenty years. At that time it took about a month to 
cross the ocean to our shores. Ships were small and could 
carry few troops. Their guns had a short range. No country 
had what would now be called more than a very small army ; 
and it was virtually impossible for any foreign nation to make 
more than a raid upon our territory before we could organize 
and equip a sufficient force to resist, however unprepared 
we might be at the outset. But now, by the improvements 
in machinery, the Atlantic has shrunk to a lake, and before 
long will shrink to a river. Except for the protection of the 
navy, and perhaps in spite of it, a foreign nation could land 
on our coast an army of such a size, and armed with such 
weapons, that unless we maintain forces several times larger 
than at present, we should be quite unable to oppose an attack 
before we had suffered incalculable damage. 

It is all very well to assert that we have no desire to quarrel 
with any one, or any one with us ; but good intentions in the 
abstract, even if accompanied by long-suffering and a disposi- 
tion to overlook affronts, will not always keep us out of strife. 
When a number of great nations are locked in a death-grapple, 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 285 

they are a trifle careless of the rights of the bystander. 
Within fifteen years of Washington's Farewell Address we 
were drawn into the wars of Napoleon, and a sorry figure we 
made for the most part of the fighting on land. A hundred 
years later our relations with the rest of the world are far 
closer, our ability to maintain a complete isolation far less. 
Except by colossal self-deception we cannot believe that the 
convulsions of Europe do not affect us profoundly, that wars 
there need not disturb us, that we are not in danger of being 
drawn into them ; or even that we may not some day find 
ourselves in the direct path of the storm. If our interest in 
the maintenance of peace is not quite so strong as that of 
some other nations, it is certainly strong enough to warrant 
our taking steps to preserve it, even to the point of joining a 
league to enforce it. The cost of the insurance is well worth 
the security to us. 

If mere material self-interest would indicate such a course, 
there are other reasons to confirm it. Civilization is to some 
extent a common heritage which it is worth while for all na- 
tions to defend, and war is a scourge which all peoples should 
use every rational means to reduce. If the family of nations 
can by standing together make wars less frequent, it is clearly 
their duty to do so, and in such a body we do not want the 
place of our own country to be vacant. 

To join such a league would mean, no doubt, a larger force 
of men trained for arms in this country, more munitions of 
war on hand, and better means of producing them rapidly; 
for although it may be assumed that the members of the 
league would never be actually called upon to carry out their 
promise to fight, they ought to have a potential force for the 
purpose. But in any case this country ought not to be so 
little prepared for an emergency as it is to-day ; and it would 
require to be less fully armed if it joined a league pledged to 
protect its members against attack, than if it stood alone and 
unprotected. In fact the tendency of such a league, by pro- 
curing at least delay before the outbreak of hostilities, would 



286 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

be to lessen the need of preparation for immediate war, and 
thus it would have a more potent effect in reducing armaments 
than any formal treaties could have, whether made volun- 
tarily or under compulsion. 

The proposal for a league to enforce peace does not conflict 
with plans to go further, to enforce justice among nations by 
compelling compliance with the decisions of a tribunal by 
diplomatic, economic, or military pressure. Nor, on the 
other hand, does it imply any such action, or interfere with 
the independence or sovereignty of states except in this one 
respect, that it would prohibit any member, before submitting 
its claims to arbitration, from making war upon another on 
pain of finding itself at war with all the rest. The proposal is 
only a suggestion, defective probably, crude certainly; but 
if, in spite of that, it is the most promising plan for main- 
taining peace now brought forward, it merits sympathetic 
consideration both here and abroad. 



AMERICA'S TERMS OF PEACE 1 

(Message to Congress January 8, 1918) 

Woodrow Wilson 

[For a sketch of Woodrow Wilson see page 3. The following address 
was delivered to both Houses of Congress by President Wilson on 
January 8, 19 18 and gives the most definite statement of the American 
attitude toward terms of peace. It has been publicly approved by states- 
men of all the Allied nations as the best expression of conditions of peace.] 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the 
Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the 
objects of the war and the possible basis of a general peace. 
Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between 
Russian representatives and representatives of the Central 
Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been 
invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be 
possible to extend these parleys into a general conference with 
regard to terms of peace and settlement. The Russian repre- 
sentatives presented not only a perfectly definite statement 
of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude 
peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete 
application of those principles. The representatives of the 
Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settle- 
ment which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal 
interpretation until their specific program of practical terms 
was added. That program proposed no concessions at all, 
either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the 
population with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a 

1 From International Conciliation, February, 19 18. Reprinted by permission. 

287 



288 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of 
territory their armed forces had occupied — every province, 
every city, every point of vantage — as a permanent addi- 
tion to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable 
conjecture that the general principles of settlement which 
they at first suggested originated with the more liberal states- 
men of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun- to 
feel the force of their own peoples' thought and purpose, 
while the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the 
military leaders who have no thought but to keep what they 
have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The 
Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They 
cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination. 
The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of 
perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives deal- 
ing ? For whom are the representatives of the Central Empires 
speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of their re- 
spective Parliaments or for the minority parties, that military 
and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their 
whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the 
Balkan States, which have felt obliged to become their asso- 
ciates in this war? The Russian representatives have in- 
sisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of 
modern democracy that the conferences they have been 
holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be 
held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has 
been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been 
listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and inten- 
tion of the resolutions of the German Reichstag of the 9th 
of July last, the spirit and intention of the liberal leaders and 
parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit 
and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or 
are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open 
and hopeless contradiction ? These are very serious and preg- 
nant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace 
of the world. 



AMERICA'S TERMS OF PEACE 289 

But whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Li to vsk, 
whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the 
utterances of the spokesmen of the Central Empires, they 
have again attempted to acquaint the world with their objects 
in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say 
what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would 
deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that 
challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with 
the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but 
again and again we have laid our whole thought and purpose 
before the world, not in general terms only, but each time 
with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definite 
terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. 
Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with 
admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and 
government of Great Britain. There is no confusion of counsel 
among the adversaries of the Central Powers, no uncertainty 
of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of 
counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure 
to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with 
Germany and her allies. The issues of life and death hang 
upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least con- 
ception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit 
himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring 
of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure 
that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of 
the very life of society and that the people for whom he speaks 
think them right and imperative as he does. 

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of 
principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrill- 
ing and more compelling than any of the many moving voices 
with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the 
voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but 
helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, 
which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their 
power apparently is shattered. And yet their soul is not 



290 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. 
Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and 
honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frank- 
ness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal 
human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of 
every friend of mankind ; and they have refused to compound 
their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. 
They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in 
anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs ; and I 
believe that the people of the United States would wish me to 
respond with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their 
present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and 
hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be 
privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost 
hope of liberty and ordered peace. 

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, 
when they are begun, shall be absolutely open, and that they 
shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings 
of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is 
gone by ; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into 
in the interest of particular governments and likely at some 
unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is 
this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man 
whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and 
gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes 
are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow 
now or at any other time the objects it has in view. 

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred 
which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own 
people impossible unless they were corrected and the world 
secured once for all against their recurrence. What we de- 
mand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. 
It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; and par- 
ticularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation 
which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its 
own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealings by 



AMERICA'S TERMS OF PEACE 291 

the other peoples of the world, as against force and selfish 
aggression. All of the peoples of the world are in effect part- 
ners in this interest and for our own part we see very clearly 
that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. 

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program, 
and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, 
is this : 

I. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at, after which 
there will surely be no private international action or rulings of 
any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the 
public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside 
territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas 
may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the 
enforcement of international covenants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers 
and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all 
the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for 
its maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national arma- 
ments will reduce to the lowest point consistent with domestic 
safety. 

V. Free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of 
all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle 
that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests 
of the population concerned must have equal weight with the equi- 
table claims of the government whose title is to be determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settle- 
ment of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and 
freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining 
for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the 
independent determination of her own political development and 
national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society 
of free nations under institutions of her own choosing ; and, more 
than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need 
and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her 
sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their 
good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished 



2Q2 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish 
sympathy. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated 
and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which 
she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single 
act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the 
nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined 
for the government of their relations with one another. Without 
this healing act the whole structure and validity of international 
law is forever impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded 
portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 
1 87 1 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the 
peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order 
that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected 
along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the 
nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded 
the freest opportunity of autonomous development. 

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; 
occupied territories restored ; Serbia accorded free and secure access 
to the sea ; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one 
another determined by friendly counsel along historically estab- 
lished lines of allegiance and nationality ; and international guar- 
antees of the political and economic independence and territorial 
integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into. 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire 
should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities 
which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted 
security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of auton- 
omous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently 
opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations 
under international guarantees. 

XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which 
should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish 
populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to 
the sea, and whose political and economic independence and terri- 
torial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. 



AMERICA'S TERMS OF PEACE 293 

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under 
specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees 
of political independence and territorial integrity to great and 
small States alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and 
assertions of right, we feel ourselves to be intimate partners 
of all the governments and peoples associated together against 
the imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided 
in purpose. We stand together until the end. 

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to 
fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but 
only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just 
and stable peace, such as can be secured only by removing 
the chief provocations to war, which this program does re- 
move. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there 
is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her 
no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enter- 
prise such as have made her record very bright and very 
enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any 
way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to 
fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of 
trade, if she is willing to associate herself with us and the 
other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of jus- 
tice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a 
place of equality among the peoples of the world — ■ the new 
world in which we now live — ■ instead of a place of mastery. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or 
modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must 
frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent 
dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her 
spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for- the 
Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men 
whose creed is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely in terms too concrete to ad- 
mit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle 
runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the 



294 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their 
right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one 
another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this prin- 
ciple be made its foundation, no part of the structure of inter- 
national justice can stand. The people of the United States 
could act upon no other principle, and to the vindication of 
this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, 
and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this, 
the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come, 
and they are ready to put their own strength, their own high- 
est purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test. 



THE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

(Address in New York City on September 27, 1918) 

Woodrow Wilson 

[For sketch of Woodrow Wilson see page 3. The address here pre- 
sented was delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York 
City, on September 27, 191 8 at the opening of the Fourth Liberty Loan 
Campaign. It is especially valuable for its discussion of the deeper issues 
of the war and of the establishment of a League of Nations.] 

My Fellow Citizens: 

I am not here to promote the loan. That will be done — ■ 
ably and enthusiastically done — ■ by the hundreds of thou- 
sands of loyal and tireless men and women who have under- 
taken to present it to you and to our fellow citizens throughout 
the country ; and I have not the least doubt of their complete 
success ; for I know their spirit and the spirit of the country. 
My confidence is confirmed, too, by the thoughtful and ex- 
perienced cooperation of the bankers here and everywhere, 
who are lending their invaluable aid and guidance. I have 
come, rather, to seek an opportunity to present to you some 
thoughts which I trust will serve to give you, in perhaps fuller 
measure than before, a vivid sense of the great issues involved, 
in order that you may appreciate and accept with added 
enthusiasm the grave significance of the duty of supporting 
the Government by your men and your means to the utmost 
point of sacrifice and self-denial. No man or woman who 
has really taken in what this war means can hesitate to give 
to the very limit of what they have; and it is my mission 
here to-night to try to make it clear once more what the war 

295 



296 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

really means. You will need no other stimulation or reminder 
of your duty. 

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh consciousness of 
what we mean to accomplish by it. When our hope and 
expectation are most excited we think more definitely than 
before of the issues that hang upon it and of the purposes 
which must be realized by means of it. For it has positive 
and well-defined purposes which we did not determine and 
which we cannot alter. No statesman or assembly created 
them : no statesman or assembly can alter them. They have 
arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of the war. 
The most that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them 
out or be false to them. They were perhaps not clear at the 
outset; but they are clear now. The war has lasted more 
than four years and the whole world has been drawn into it. 
The common will of mankind has been substituted for the 
particular purposes of individual states. Individual states- 
men may have started the conflict, but neither they nor their 
opponents can stop it as they please. It has become a peoples' 
war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of 
power and variety of fortune, are involved in its sweeping 
processes of change and settlement. We came into it when its 
character had become fully defined and it was plain that no 
nation could stand apart or be indifferent to its outcome. 
Its challenge drove to the heart of everything we cared for 
and lived for. The voice of the war had become clear and 
gripped our hearts. Our brothers from many lands, as well 
as our own murdered dead under the sea, were calling to us, 
and we responded, fiercely and of course. 

The air was clear about us. We saw things in their full, 
convincing proportions as they were ; and we have seen them 
with steady eyes and unchanging comprehension ever since. 
We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as any group 
of men either here or elsewhere had defined them, and we can 
accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and settle 
them. Those issues are these : 



THE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT PEACE 297 

Shall the military power of any nation or group of nations be 
suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have 
no right to rule except the right of force ? 

Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make 
them subject to their purpose and interest ? 

Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal 
affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their own will 
and choice ? 

Shall there be a common standard of right and privilege for all 
peoples and nations or shall the strong do as they will and the weak 
suffer without redress ? 

Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alliance 
or shall there be a common concert to oblige the observance of 
common rights? 

No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues of 
the struggle. They are the issues of it ; and they must be 
settled — by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment 
of interests, but definitely and once for all and with a full and 
unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of 
the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. 

This is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace, 
if we speak sincerely, intelligently, and with a real knowledge 
and comprehension of the matter we deal with. 

We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained by 
any kind of bargain or compromise with the Governments 
of the Central Empires, because we have dealt with them 
already and have seen them deal with other Governments 
that were parties to this struggle, at Brest-Litovsk and 
Bucharest. They have convinced us that they are without 
honor and do not intend justice. They observe no covenants, 
accept no principle but force and their own interest. We 
cannot "come to terms" with them. They have made it 
impossible. The German people must by this time be fully 
aware that we cannot accept the word of those who forced 
this war upon us. We do not think the same thoughts or 
speak the same language of agreement. 



298 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

It is of capital importance that we should also be explicitly 
agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any kind of com- 
promise or abatement of the principles we have avowed as 
the principles for which we are fighting. There should exist 
no doubt about that. I am, therefore, going to take the lib- 
erty of speaking with the utmost frankness about the prac- 
tical implications that are involved in it. 

If it be indeed and in truth the common object of the 
Governments associated against Germany and of the nations 
whom they govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve by the 
coming settlements a secure and lasting peace, it will be 
necessary that all who sit down at the peace table shall come 
ready and willing to pay the price, the only price, that will 
procure it; and ready and willing, also, to create in some 
virile fashion the only instrumentality by which it can be 
made certain that the agreements of the peace will be honored 
and fulfilled. 

That price is impartial justice in every item of the settle- 
ment, no matter whose interest is crossed; and not only 
impartial justice, but also the satisfaction of the several 
peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That indispensable 
instrumentality is a League of Nations formed under covenants 
that will be efficacious. Without such an instrumentality, 
by which the peace of the world can be guaranteed, peace 
will rest in part upon the word of outlaws, and only upon 
that word. For Germany will have to redeem her character, 
not by what happens at the peace table but by what follows. 
And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of Nations 
and the clear definition of its objects must be a part, is in a 
sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement itself. 
It cannot be formed now. If formed now, it would be merely 
a new alliance confined to the nations associated against a 
common enemy. It is not likely that it could be formed after 
the settlement. It is necessary to guarantee the peace; and 
the peace cannot be guaranteed as an afterthought. The 
reason, to speak in plain terms again, why it must be 



THE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT PEACE 299 

guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace whose 
promises have proved untrustworthy, and means must be found 
in connection with the peace settlement itself to remove that 
source of insecurity. It would be folly to leave the guarantee 
to the subsequent voluntary action of the Governments we 
have seen destroy Russia and deceive Rumania. 

But these general terms do not disclose the whole matter. 
Some details are needed to make them sound less like a thesis 
and more like a practical program. These, then, are some of 
the particulars, and I state them with the greater confidence 
because I can state them authoritatively as representing 
this Government's interpretation of its own duty with regard 
to peace: 

First. The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrim- 
ination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to 
whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that plays 
no favorites and knows no standard but the equal rights of the 
several peoples concerned. 

Second. No special or separate interest of any single nation 
or any group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the 
settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all. 

Third. There can be no leagues or alliances or special covenants 
and understandings within the general and common family of the 
League of Nations. 

Fourth. And more specifically, there can be no special, selfish 
economic combinations within the league and no employment of 
any form of economic boycott or exclusion except as the power 
of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world 
may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of disci- 
pline and control. 

Fifth. All international agreements and treaties of every kind 
must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the world. 

Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities 
have been the prolific source in the modern world of the plans 
and passions that produce war. It would be an insincere 
as well as an insecure peace that did not exclude them in 
definite and binding terms. 



300 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

The confidence with which I venture to speak for our people 
in these matters does not spring from our traditions merely 
and the well-known principles of international action which 
we have always professed and followed. In the same sentence 
in which I say that the United States will enter into no special 
arrangements or understandings with particular nations let 
me say also that the United States is prepared to assume its 
full share of responsibility for the maintenance of the common 
covenants and understandings upon which peace must hence- 
forth rest. We still read Washington's immortal warning 
against "entangling alliances" with full comprehension and 
an answering purpose. But only special and limited alliances 
entangle ; and we recognize and accept the duty of a new day 
in which we are permitted to hope for a general alliance which 
will avoid entanglements and clear the air of the world for 
common understandings and the maintenance of common 
rights. 

I have made this analysis of the international situation 
which the war has created, not, of course, because I doubted 
whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with 
whom we are associated were of the same mind and enter- 
tained a like purpose, but because the air every now and again 
gets darkened by mists and groundless doubtings and mis- 
chievous perversions of counsel and it is necessary once and 
again to sweep all the irresponsible talk about peace intrigues 
and weakening morale and doubtful purpose on the part of 
those in authority utterly, and if need be unceremoniously, 
aside and say things in the plainest words -that can be found, 
even when it is only to say over again what has been said 
before, quite as plainly if in less unvarnished terms. 

As I have said, neither I nor any other man in govern- 
mental authority created or gave form to the issues of this 
war. I have simply responded to them with such vision as I 
could command. But I have responded gladly and with a 
resolution that has grown warmer and more confident as the 
issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now plain that 



THE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT PEACE 301 

they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be willfully. 
I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight for them as 
time and circumstance have revealed them to me as to all 
the world. Our enthusiasm for them grows more and more 
irresistible as they stand out in more and more vivid and un- 
mistakable outline. 

And the forces that fight for them draw into closer and 
closer array, organize their millions into more and more un- 
conquerable might, as they become more and more distinct 
to the thought and purpose of the peoples engaged. It is 
the peculiarity of this great war that while statesmen have 
seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose and have 
sometimes seemed to shift their ground and their point of 
view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen are 
supposed to instruct and lead, has grown more and more un- 
clouded, more and more certain of what it is that they are 
fighting for. National purposes have fallen more and more 
into the background and the common purpose of enlightened 
mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain men 
have become on all hands more simple and straightforward 
and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of 
affairs, who still retain the impression that they are playing 
a game of power and playing for high stakes. That is why I 
have said that this is a peoples' war, not a statesmen's. States- 
men must follow the clarified common thought or be broken. 

I take that to be the significance of the fact that assemblies 
and associations of many kinds made up of plain workaday 
people have demanded, almost every time they came together, 
and are still demanding, that the leaders of their Govern- 
ments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly what it is, 
that they are seeking in this war, and what they think the 
items of the final settlement should be. They are not yet 
satisfied with what they have been told. They still seem to 
fear that they are getting what they ask for only in states- 
men's terms, — only in the terms of territorial arrangements 
and divisions of power, and not in terms of broad-visioned 



302 THE NEW EUROPE AND A LASTING PEACE 

justice and mercy and peace and the satisfaction of those 
deep-seated longings of oppressed and distracted men and 
women and enslaved peoples that seem to them the only 
things worth righting a war for that engulfs the world. Per- 
haps statesmen have not always recognized this changed 
aspect of the whole world of policy and action. Perhaps they 
have not always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked 
because they did not know how searching those questions 
were and what sort of answers they demanded. 

But I, for one, am glad to attempt the answer again and 
again, in the hope that I may make it clearer and clearer 
that my one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the 
ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply 
whose meaning no one can have any excuse for misunder- 
standing, if he understands the language in which it is spoken 
or can get some one to translate it correctly into his own. And 
I believe that the leaders of the Governments with which we 
are associated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly 
as I have tried to speak. I hope that they will feel free to say 
whether they think that I am in any degree mistaken in my 
interpretation of the issues involved or in my purpose with 
regard to the means by which a satisfactory settlement of those 
issues may be obtained. Unity of purpose and of counsel are 
as imperatively necessary in this war as was unity of command 
in the battle field ; and with perfect unity of purpose and 
counsel will come assurance of complete victory. It can be 
had in no other way. "Peace drives" can be effectively neu- 
tralized and silenced only by showing that every victory of 
the nations associated against Germany brings the nations 
nearer the sort of peace which will bring security and re- 
assurance to all peoples and make the recurrence of another 
such struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impossible, 
and that nothing else can. Germany is constantly intimating 
the " terms" she will accept; and always finds that the world 
does not want terms. It wishes the final triumph of justice 
and fair dealing. 



VI 

FEATURES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND 
CHARACTER 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AS MOLDING 
PUBLIC OPINION 1 

James Bryce 

[For another selection by the same author and a biographical sketch 
see page 160.] 

As the public opinion of a people is even more directly 
than its political institutions the reflection and expression 
of its character, we may begin the analysis of opinion in 
America by noting some of those general features of national 
character which give tone and color to the people's thoughts 
and feelings on politics. There are, of course, varieties proper 
to different classes, and to different parts of the vast territory 
of the Union ; but it is well to consider first such character- 
istics as belong to the nation as a whole, and afterwards to 
examine the various classes and districts of the country. 
And when I speak of the nation, I mean the native Americans. 
What follows is not applicable to the recent immigrants from 
Europe, and, of course, even less applicable to the Southern 
negroes. 

The Americans are a good-natured people, kindly, helpful 
to one another, disposed to take a charitable view even of 
wrongdoers. Their anger sometimes flames up, but the fire 
is soon extinct. Nowhere is cruelty more abhorred. Even 
a mob lynching a horse thief in the West has consideration 
for the criminal, and will give him a good drink of whisky 
before he is strung up. Cruelty to slaves was unusual while 
slavery lasted, the best proof of which is the quietness of the 
slaves during the war when all the men and many of the boys 
of the South were serving in the Confederate armies. As 

1 From "The American Commonwealth," Chapter LXXX. Copyright, 
1910, The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission. 

305 



306 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

everybody knows, juries are more lenient to offenses of all 
kinds but one, offenses against women, than they are any- 
where in Europe. The Southern " rebels" were soon for- 
given; and though civil wars are proverbially bitter, there 
have been few struggles in which the combatants did so many 
little friendly acts for one another, few in which even the 
vanquished have so quickly buried their resentments. It is 
true that newspapers and public speakers say hard things of 
their opponents ; but this is a part of the game, and is besides 
a way of relieving their feelings : the bark is sometimes the 
louder in order that a bite may not follow. Vindictiveness 
shown by a public man excites general disapproval, and the 
maxim of letting bygones be bygones is pushed so far that 
an offender's misdeeds are often forgotten when they ought 
to be remembered against him. 

All the world knows that they are a humorous people. 
They are as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the 
nineteenth century as the French were the purveyors of wit 
to the eighteenth. Nor is this sense of the ludicrous side of 
things confined to a few brilliant writers. It is diffused 
among the whole people; it colors their ordinary life, and 
gives to their talk that distinctively new flavor which a 
European palate enjoys. Their capacity for enjoying a joke 
against themselves was oddly illustrated at the outset of the 
Civil War, a time of stern excitement, by the merriment 
which arose over the hasty retreat of the Federal troops at 
the battle of Bull Run. When William M. Tweed was ruling 
and robbing New York, and had set on the bench men who 
were openly prostituting justice, the citizens found the situa- 
tion so amusing that they almost forgot to be angry. Much 
of President Lincoln's popularity, and much also of the gift 
he showed for restoring confidence to the North at the darkest 
moments of the war, was due to the humorous way he used 
to turn things, conveying the impression of not being himself 
uneasy, even when he was most so. 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 307 

The native Americans are an educated people, compared 
with the whole mass of the population in any European 
country except Switzerland, parts of Germany, Norway, 
Iceland, and Scotland ; that is to say, the average of knowl- 
edge is higher, the habit of reading and thinking more gen- 
erally diffused, than in any other country. They know the 
Constitution of their own country, they follow public affairs, 
they join in local government and learn from it how govern- 
ment must be carried on, and in particular how discussion 
must be conducted in meetings, and its results tested at elec- 
tions. The Town Meeting was for New England the most 
perfect school of self-government in any modern country. 
In villages, men used to exercise their minds on theological 
questions, debating points of Christian doctrine with no 
small acuteness. Women, in particular, pick up at the 
public schools and from the popular magazines far more 
miscellaneous information than the women of any European 
country possess, and this naturally tells on the intelligence 
of the men.' Almost everywhere one finds women's clubs 
in which literary, artistic, and social questions are discussed, 
and to which men of mark are brought to deliver lectures. 

That the education of the masses is nevertheless a super- 
ficial education goes without saying. It is sufficient to enable 
them to think they know something about the great problems 
of pohtics; insufficient to show them how little they know. 
The public elementary school gives everybody the key to 
knowledge in making reading and writing familiar, but it has 
not time to teach him how to use the key, whose use is in 
fact, by the pressure of daily work, almost confined to the 
newspaper and the magazine. So we may say that if the 
political education of the average American voter be com- 
pared with that of the average voter in Europe, it stands 
high; but if it be compared with the functions which the 
theory of the American government lays on him, which its 
spirit implies, which the methods of its party organization 
assume, its inadequacy is manifest. This observation, however, 



308 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

is not so much a reproach to the schools, which generally 
do what English schools omit — instruct the child in the prin- 
ciples of the Constitution — as a tribute to the height of the 
ideal which the American conception of popular rule sets up. 
For the functions of the citizen are not, as has hitherto been 
the case in Europe, confined to the choosing of legislators, 
who are then left to settle issues of policy and select executive 
rulers. The American citizen is one of the governors of the 
Republic. Issues are decided and rulers selected by the direct 
popular vote. Elections are so frequent that to do his duty 
at them a citizen ought to be constantly watching public 
affairs with a full comprehension of the principles involved 
in them, and a judgment of the candidates derived from a 
criticism of their arguments as well as a recollection of their 
past careers. The instruction received in the common schools 
and from the newspapers, and supposed to be developed by 
the practice of primaries and conventions, while it makes the 
voter deem himself capable of governing, does not fit him to 
weigh the real merits of statesmen, to discern the true grounds 
on which questions ought to be decided, to note the drift of 
events and discover the direction in which parties are being 
carried. He is like the sailor who knows the spars and ropes 
of the ship and is expert in working her, but is ignorant of 
geography and navigation; who can perceive that some of 
the officers are smart and others dull, but cannot judge which 
of them is qualified to use the sextant or will best keep his 
head during a hurricane. 



Religion apart, they are an unreverential people. I do not 
mean irreverent, — far from it ; nor do I mean that they 
have not a great capacity for hero-worship, as they have 
many a time shown. I mean that they are little disposed, 
especially in public questions — political, economical, or 
social — to defer to the opinions of those who are wiser or 
better instructed than themselves. Everything tends to 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 309 

make the individual independent and self-reliant. He goes 
early into the world; he is left to make his way alone; he 
tries one occupation after another, if the first or second 
venture does not prosper ; he gets to think that each man is 
his own best helper and adviser. Thus he is led, I will not 
say to form his own opinions, for few are those who do that, 
but to fancy that he has formed them, and to feel little need 
of aid from others towards correcting them. There is, there- 
fore, less disposition than in Europe to expect light and lead- 
ing on public affairs from speakers and writers. Oratory is 
not directed towards instruction, but towards stimulation. 
Special knowledge, which commands deference in applied 
science or in finance, does not command it in politics, be- 
cause that is not deemed a special subject, but one within 
the comprehension of every practical man. Politics is, to be 
sure, a profession, and so far might seem to need pro- 
fessional aptitudes. But the professional politician is not 
the man who has studied statesmanship, but the man who 
has practiced the art of running conventions and winning 
elections. 

Even that strong point of America, the completeness and 
highly popular character of local government, contributes 
to lower the standard of attainment expected in a public 
man, because the citizens judge of all politics by the politics 
they see first and know best, — those of their township or city, 
— and fancy that he who is fit to be selectman, or county 
commissioner, or alderman, is fit to sit in the great council of 
the nation. Like the shepherd in Virgil, they think the only 
difference between their town and Rome is in its size, and 
believe that what does for Lafayetteville will do well enough 
for Washington. Hence when a man of statesmanlike gifts 
appears, -he has little encouragement to take a high and 
statesmanlike tone, for his words do not necessarily receive 
weight from- his position. He fears to be instructive or horta- 
tory, lest such an attitude should expose him to ridicule; 
and in America ridicule is a terrible power. Nothing escapes 



310 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

it. Few have the courage to face it. In the indulgence of 
it even this humane race can be unfeeling. 



They are a commercial people, whose point of view is 
primarily that of persons accustomed to reckon profit and 
loss. Their impulse is to apply a direct practical test to men 
and measures, to assume that the men who have got on fastest 
are the smartest men, and that a scheme that seems to pay 
well deserves to be supported. Abstract reasonings they dis- 
like, subtle reasonings they suspect; they accept nothing 
as practical which is not plain, downright, apprehensible by 
an ordinary understanding. Although open-minded, so far 
as willingness to listen goes, they are hard to convince, be- 
cause they have really made up their minds on most subjects, 
having adopted the prevailing notions of their locality or 
party as truths due to their own reflection. 

They are an unsettled people. In no State of the Union 
is the bulk of the population so fixed in its residence as every- 
where in Europe; in some it is almost nomadic. Except in 
the more stagnant parts of the South, nobody feels rooted to 
the soil. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, he cannot readily 
contract habits of trustful dependence on his neighbors. 
Community of interest, or of belief in such a cause as temper- 
ance, or protection for native industry, unites him for a time 
with others similarly minded ; but congenial spirits seldom live 
long enough together to form a school or type of local opinion 
which develops strength and becomes a proselytizing force. 
Perhaps this tends to prevent the growth of variety of opinion. 
When a man arises with some power of original thought in 
politics, he is feeble if isolated, and is depressed by his in- 
significance, whereas if he grows up in favorable soil with 
sympathetic minds around him, whom he can in prolonged 
intercourse permeate with his ideas, he learns with con- 
fidence and soars on the wings of his disciples. One who 
considers the variety of conditions under which men live 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 311 

in America may certainly find ground for surprise that there 
should be so few independent schools of opinion. 

But even while an unsettled, they are nevertheless an 
associative, because a sympathetic people. Although the 
atoms are in constant motion, they have a strong attraction 
for one another. Each man catches his neighbor's sentiment 
more quickly and easily than happens with the English. 
That sort of reserve and isolation, that tendency to repel 
rather than to invite confidence, which foreigners attribute 
to the Englishman, though it belongs rather to the upper and 
middle class than to the nation generally, is, though not 
absent, yet less marked in America. It seems to be one of 
the notes of difference between the two branches of the race. 
In the United States, since each man likes to feel that his 
ideas raise in other minds the same emotions as in his own, 
a sentiment or impulse is rapidly propagated and quickly 
conscious of its strength. Add to this the aptitude for or- 
ganization which their history and institutions have educed, 
and one sees how the tendency to form and the talent to work 
combinations for a political or any other object has become 
one of the great features of the country. Hence, too, the 
immense strength of party. It rests not only on interest and 
habit and the sense of its value as a means of working the 
government, but also on the sympathetic element and in- 
stinct of combination ingrained in the national character. 

They are a changeful people. Not fickle, for they are if 
anything too tenacious of ideas once adopted, too fast bound 
by party ties, too willing to pardon the errors of a cherished 
leader. But they have what chemists call low specific heat; 
they grow warm suddenly and cool as suddenly; they are 
liable to swift and vehement outbursts of feeling which rush 
like wildfire across the country, gaining glow, like the wheel 
of a railway car, by the accelerated motion. The very simi- 
larity of ideas and equality of conditions which makes them 
hard to convince at first makes a conviction once implanted 
run its course the more triumphantly. They seem all to take 



3 i2 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

flame at once, because what has told upon one, has told in 
the same way upon all the rest, and the obstructing and sepa- 
rating barriers which exist in Europe scarcely exist here. 
Nowhere is the saying so applicable that nothing succeeds 
like success. The native American or so-called Know-Nothing 
party had in two years from its foundation become a tre- 
mendous force, running, and seeming for a time likely to 
carry, its own presidential candidate. In three years more 
it was dead without hope of revival. Now and then, as for 
instance in the elections of 1874-1875, and again in those of 
1890, there comes a rush of feeling so sudden and tre- 
mendous, that the name of Tidal Wave has been invented 
to describe it. 

After this it may seem a paradox to add that the Americans 
are a conservative people. Yet any one who observes the 
power of habit among them, the tenacity with which old 
institutions and usages, legal and theological formulas, have 
been clung to, will admit the fact. Moreover, prosperity 
helps to make them conservative. They are satisfied with 
the world they live in, for they have found it a good world, 
in which they have grown rich and can sit under their own 
vine and fig tree, none making them afraid. They are proud 
of their history and of their Constitution, which has come out 
of the furnace of civil war with scarcely the smell of fire upon 
it. It is little to say that they do not seek change for the sake 
of change, because the nations that do this exist only in the 
fancy of alarmist philosophers. There are nations, however, 
whose impatience of existing evils, or whose proneness to be 
allured by visions of a brighter future, makes them under- 
estimate the risk of change, nations that will pull up the 
plant to see whether it has begun to strike root. This is not 
the way of the Americans. They are no doubt ready to listen 
to suggestions from any quarter. They do not consider that 
an institution is justified by its existence, but admit every- 
thing to be matter for criticism. Their keenly competitive 
spirit and pride in their own ingenuity have made them 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 313 

quicker than any other people to adopt and adapt inven- 
tions : telephones were in use in every little town over the 
West, while in the city of London men were just beginning 
to wonder whether they could be made to pay. The Ameri- 
cans have doubtless of late years become, especially in the 
West, an experimental people, so far as politics and social 
legislation are concerned. Yet there is also a sense in which 
they are at bottom a conservative people, in virtue both of 
the deep instincts of their race and of that practical shrewd- 
ness which recognizes the value of permanence and solidity 
in institutions. They are conservative in their fundamental 
beliefs, in the structure of their governments, in their social 
and domestic usages. They are like a tree whose pendulous 
shoots quiver and rustle with the lightest breeze, while its 
roots enfold the rock with a grip which storms cannot loosen. 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE WEST TO AMERICAN 

DEMOCRACY 1 

Frederick J. Turner 

[Frederick J. Turner (1861- ) was educated at the University of 
Wisconsin and at Johns Hopkins, and from 1889 to 1910 was connected 
with the former as instructor and professor of history. Since then he has 
been Professor of History in Harvard University. He is best known for 
his studies of Western history, among these being the present essay 
and "The Rise of the New West" (1906) in the American Nation series. 
Nowhere can a better presentation of the characteristic features of West- 
ern democracy and its various problems be found than in the essay from 
which the historical review below has been taken.] 

... It is to changes in the economic and social life of a 
people that we must look for the forces that ultimately create 
and modify organs of political action. ... In dealing with 
Western contributions to democracy, it is essential that the 
considerations which have just been mentioned should be kept 
in mind. Whatever these contributions may have been, we 
find ourselves at the present time in an era of such profound 
economic and social transformation as to raise the question of 
the effect of these changes upon the democratic institutions 
of the United States. Within a decade four marked changes 
have occurred in our National development : taken together 
they constitute a revolution. 

First, there is the exhaustion of the supply of free land and 
the closing of the movement of Western advance as an effec- 
tive factor in American development. ... In the second 
place, contemporaneously with this there has been such a 
concentration of capital in the control of fundamental indus- 
tries as to make a new epoch in the economic development. 
1 From Atlantic Monthly, January, 1903. Reprinted by permission. 

3i4 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 315 

of the United States. .... A third phenomenon ... is the 
expansion of the United States politically and commercially 
into lands beyond the seas. . . . And fourth, the political 
parties of the United States now tend to divide on issues that 
involve the question of Socialism. 



Jefferson was the first prophet of American democracy, and 
when we analyze the essential features of his gospel, it is clear 
that the Western influence was the dominant element. Jef- 
ferson himself was born in the frontier region of Virginia, on 
the edge of the Blue Ridge, in the middle of the eighteenth 
century. His father was a pioneer. Jefferson's Notes on 
Virginia reveal clearly his conception that democracy should 
have an agricultural basis, and that manufacturing develop- 
ment and city life were dangerous to the purity of the body 
politic. Simplicity and economy in government, the right of 
revolution, the freedom of the individual, the belief that those 
who win the vacant lands are entitled to shape their own 
government in their own way, these are all parts of the plat- 
form of political principles to which he gave his adhesion, 
and they are all elements eminently characteristic of the 
Western democracy into which he was born. In the period of 
the Revolution he had brought in a series of measures which 
tended to throw the power of Virginia into the hands of the 
settlers in the interior rather than of the coastwise aristocracy. 
The repeal of the laws of entail and primogeniture would have 
destroyed the great estates on which the planting aristocracy 
based its power. The abolition of the established church 
would still further have diminished the influence of the coast- 
wise party in favor of the dissenting sects of the interior. 
His scheme of general public education reflected the same 
tendency, and his demand for the abolition of slavery was 
characteristic of a representative of the West rather than of the 
old-time aristocracy of the coast. His sympathy with Western 
expansion culminated in the Louisiana Purchase. In a word, 



316 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the tendencies of Jefferson's legislation were to replace the 
dominance of the planting aristocracy by the dominance of 
the interior class, which had sought in vain to achieve its 
liberties in the period of Bacon's rebellion. 

Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist 
of democracy, not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of 
the tide of settlement farther and farther toward the interior 
did the democratic influence grow strong enough to take 
actual possession of the government. The period from 1800 
to 1820 saw a steady increase in these tendencies. The estab- 
lished classes of New England and the South began to take 
alarm. Perhaps no better illustration of the apprehensions of 
the old-time Federal conservative can be given than these 
utterances of President Dwight, of Yale College, in the book of 
travels which he published in that period : 

The class of pioneers cannot live in regular society. They are 
too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal, and too shift- 
less to acquire either property or character. They are impatient 
of the restraints of law, religion, and morality, and grumble about 
the taxes by which the Rulers, Ministers, and Schoolmasters are 
supported. 

After exposing the injustice of the community in neglecting to 
invest persons of such superior merit in public offices, in many an 
eloquent harangue uttered by many a kitchen fire, in every black- 
smith shop, in every corner of the streets, and finding all their ef- 
forts vain, they become at length discouraged, and under the pres- 
sure of poverty, the fear of the gaol, and consciousness of public 
contempt, leave their native places and betake themselves to the 
wilderness. 

Such was a conservative's impression of that pioneer 
movement of New England colonists who had spread up the 
valley of the Connecticut into New Hampshire, Vermont, 
and western New York in the period of which he wrote, 
and who afterwards went on to possess the Northwest. New 
England Federalism looked with a shudder at the democratic 
ideas of those who refused to recognize the established order. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 317 

But in that period there came into the Union a sisterhood of 
frontier states — • Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri — with 
provisions for the franchise that brought in complete de- 
mocracy. Even the newly created states of the Southwest 
showed the same tendency. The wind of democracy blew so 
strongly from the West, that even in the older states of New 
York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia conventions 
were called, which liberalized their constitutions by strength- 
ening the democratic basis of the state. In the same time the 
labor population of the cities began to assert its power and 
its determination to share in government. Of this frontier 
democracy which now took possession of the nation, Andrew 
Jackson was the very personification. He was born in the back- 
woods of the Carolinas in the midst of the turbulent democ- 
racy that preceded the Revolution, and he grew up in the 
frontier state of Tennessee. In the midst of this region of 
personal feuds and frontier ideals of law, he quickly rose to 
leadership. The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor 
of Congress was an omen full of significance. He reached 
Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration, 
having ridden on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to 
his destination. Gallatin, himself a Western man, describes 
Jackson as he entered the halls of Congress: "A tall, lank, 
uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging 
over his face and a cue down his back tied in an eel skin ; his 
dress singular ; his manners those of a rough backwoodsman." 
And Jefferson testified : " When I was president of the Senate 
he was a senator, and he could never speak on account of the 
rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly 
and as often choke with rage." At last the frontier in the 
person of its typical man had found a place in the government. 
This six-foot backwoodsman, with blue eyes that could blaze 
on occasion, this choleric, impetuous, self-willed Scotch-Irish 
leader of men, this expert duelist, and ready fighter, this 
embodiment of the tenacious, vehement, personal West, was 
in politics to stay. The frontier democracy of that time had 



318 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the instincts of the clansman in the days of Scotch border 
warfare. Vehement and tenacious as the democracy was, 
strenuously as each man contended with his neighbor for the 
spoils of the new country that opened before them, they all 
had respect for the man who best expressed their aspirations 
and their ideas. Every community had its hero. In the war 
of 1812 and the subsequent Indian righting Jackson made 
good his claim, not only to the loyalty of the people of Ten- 
nessee, but of the whole West, and even of the nation. He had 
the essential traits of the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. 
It was a frontier free from the influence of European ideas and 
institutions. The men of the " Western World" turned their 
backs upon the Atlantic Ocean, and with grim energy and 
self-reliance began to build up a society free from the domi- 
nance of ancient forms. 

The Westerner defended himself and resented governmental 
restrictions. The duel and the blood-feud found congenial 
soil in Kentucky and Tennessee. The idea of the personality 
of law was often dominant over the organized machinery of 
justice. That method was best which was most direct and 
effective. The backwoodsman was intolerant of men who 
split hairs, or scrupled over the method of reaching the right. 
In a word, the unchecked development of the individual was 
the significant product of this frontier democracy. It sought 
rather to express itself by choosing a man of the people than 
by the formation of elaborate governmental institutions. It 
was because Andrew Jackson personified these essential West- 
ern traits that in his presidency he became the idol and the 
mouthpiece of the popular will. In his assaults upon the 
bank as an engine of aristocracy, and in his denunciation of 
nullification, he went directly to his object with the ruthless 
energy of a frontiersman. For formal law and the subtleties 
of state sovereignty he had the contempt of a backwoodsman. 
Nor is it without significance that this typical man of the new 
democracy will always be associated with the triumph of the 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 319 

spoils system in national politics. To the new democracy of 
the West, office was an opportunity to exercise natural rights 
as an equal citizen of the community. Rotation in office 
served not simply to allow the successful man to punish his 
enemies and reward his friends, but it also furnished the train- 
ing in the actual conduct of political affairs which every 
American claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive 
democracy of the type of the United States in 1830 could such 
a system have existed without the ruin of the state. National 
government in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted 
machine, and the evils of the system were long in making 
themselves fully apparent. 

The triumph of Andrew Jackson marked the end of the old 
era of trained statesmen for the presidency. With him began 
the era of the popular hero. Even Martin Van Buren, whom 
we think of in connection with the East, was born in a log 
house under conditions that were not unlike parts of the older 
West. Harrison was the hero of the Northwest, as Jackson 
had been of the Southwest. Polk was a typical Tennesseean, 
eager to expand the nation, and Zachary Taylor was what 
Webster called a " frontier colonel." During the period that 
followed Jackson power passed from the region of Kentucky 
and Tennessee to the border of the Mississippi. The natural 
democratic tendencies that had earlier shown themselves in the 
Gulf States were destroyed, however, by the spread of cotton 
culture and the development of great plantations in that re- 
gion. What had been typical of the democracy of the Revo- 
lutionary frontier and of the frontier of Andrew Jackson 
was now to be seen in the states between the Ohio and the 
Mississippi. As Andrew Jackson is the typical democrat of 
the former region, so Abraham Lincoln is the very embodiment 
of the pioneer period of the old Northwest. Indeed, he is the 
embodiment of the democracy of the West. How can one 
speak of him except in the words of Lowell's great Com- 
memoration Ode : 



320 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

For him her Old- World molds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 



His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
Nothing of Europe here, 



New birth of our new soil, the first American. 

The pioneer life from which Lincoln came differed in impor- 
tant respects from the frontier democracy typified by Andrew 
Jackson. Jackson's democracy was contentious, individualis- 
tic, and it sought the ideal of local self-government and expan- 
sion. Lincoln represents rather the pioneer folk who entered 
the forest of the great Northwest to chop out a home, to build 
up their fortunes in the midst of a continually ascending 
industrial movement. In the democracy of the Southwest, 
industrial development and city life were only minor factors, 
but to the democracy of the Northwest they were its very life. 
To widen the area of the clearing, to contend with one another 
for the mastery of the industrial resources of the rich provinces, 
to struggle for a place in the ascending movement of society, 
to transmit to one's offspring the chance for education, for 
industrial betterment, for the rise in life which the hardships 
of the pioneer existence denied to the pioneer himself , these 
were some of the ideals of the region to which Lincoln came. 
The men were commonwealth builders, industry builders. 
Whereas the type of hero in the Southwest was militant, in 
the Northwest he was industrial. It was in the midst of these 
"plain people," as he loved to call them, that Lincoln grew 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 321 

to manhood. As Emerson says : " He is the true history of the 
American people in his time." The years of his early life were 
the years when the democracy of the Northwest came into 
struggle with the institution of slavery that threatened to 
forbid the expansion of the democratic pioneer life in the West. 
In President Eliot's essay on Five American Contributions 
to Civilization he instances as one of the supreme tests of 
American democracy its attitude upon the question of slavery. 
But if democracy chose wisely and worked effectively toward 
the solution of this problem, it must be remembered that 
Western democracy took the lead. The rail-splitter himself 
became the nation's President in that fierce time of struggle, 
and the armies of the woodsmen and pioneer farmers recruited 
in the old Northwest, under the leadership of Sherman and of 
Grant, made free the Father of Waters, marched through 
Georgia, and helped to force the struggle to a conclusion at 
Appomattox. The free pioneer democracy struck down slave- 
holding aristocracy on its march to the West. 

The last chapter in the development of Western democracy 
is the one that deals with its conquest over the vast spaces 
of the new West. At each new stage of Western development, 
the people have had to grapple with larger areas, with vaster 
combinations. The little colony of Massachusetts veterans 
that settled at Marietta received a land grant as large as the 
state of Rhode Island. The band of Connecticut pioneers that 
followed Moses Cleaveland to the Connecticut Reserve 
occupied a region as large as the parent state. The area which 
settlers of New England stock occupied on the prairies of 
northern Illinois surpassed the combined area of Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Men who had been 
accustomed to the narrow valleys and the little towns of the 
East found themselves out on the boundless spaces of the 
West dealing with units of such magnitude as dwarfed their 
former experience. The Great Lakes, the prairies, the Great 
Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi and the Missouri, 
furnished new standards of measurement for the achievement 



322 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

of this industrial democracy. Individualism began to give 
way to cooperation and to governmental activity. Even 
in the earlier days of the democratic conquest of the wilderness, 
demands had been made upon the government for support 
in internal improvements, but this new West showed a grow- 
ing tendency to call to its assistance the powerful arm of 
national authority. In the period since the Civil War^the vast 
public domain has been donated to the individual farmer, to 
states for education, to railroads for the construction of trans- 
portation lines. Moreover, with the advent of democracy in 
the last fifteen years upon the Great Plains, new physical 
conditions have presented themselves which have accelerated 
the social tendency of Western democracy. The pioneer 
farmer of the days of Lincoln could place his family on the 
flatboat, strike into the wilderness, cut out his clearing, and 
with little or no capital go on to the achievement of industrial 
independence. Even the homesteader on the Western prairies 
found it possible to work out a similar independent destiny, 
although the factor of transportation made a serious and 
increasing impediment to the free working out of his individual 
career. But when the arid lands and the mineral resources of 
the far West were reached, no conquest was possible by the 
old individual pioneer methods. Here expensive irrigation 
works must be constructed, cooperative activity was demanded 
in utilization of the water supply, capital beyond the reach 
of the small farmer was required. In a word, the physiographic 
province itself decreed that the destiny of this new frontier 
should be social rather than individual. 

Magnitude of social achievement is the watchword of the 
democracy since the Civil War. From petty towns built in 
the marshes, cities arose whose greatness and industrial power 
are the wonder of our time. The conditions were ideal for the 
production of captains of industry. The old democratic admi- 
ration for the self-made man, its old deference to the rights of 
competitive individual development, together with the stu- 
pendous natural resources that opened to the conquest of the 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 323 

keenest and the strongest, gave such conditions of mobility 
as enabled the development of the vast industries which in 
our own decade have marked the West. 

Thus, in brief, have been outlined the larger phases of the 
development of Western democracy in the different areas 
which it has conquered. There has been a steady development 
of the industrial ideal, and a steady increase of the social 
tendency, in this later movement of Western democracy. 
While the individualism of the frontier, so prominent in the 
earliest days of Western advance, has been preserved as an 
ideal, more and more these individuals struggling each with 
the other, dealing with vaster and vaster areas, with larger 
and larger problems, have found it necessary to combine under 
the leadership of the strongest. This is the explanation of 
the rise of those preeminent captains of industry whose genius 
has concentrated capital to control the fundamental resources 
of the nation. If now, in the way of recapitulation, we try 
to pick out from the influences that have gone to the making 
of Western democracy the factors which constitute the net 
result of this movement, we shall have to mention at least 
the following : 

Most important of all has been the fact that an area of free 
land has continually lain on the western border of the settled 
area of the United States. Whenever social conditions tended 
to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to press 
upon labor or political restraints to impede the freedom of 
the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions 
of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, 
economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. Men would 
not accept inferior wages and a permanent position of social 
subordination when this promised land of freedom and equality 
was theirs for the taking. Who would rest content under 
oppressive legislative conditions when with a slight effort he 
might reach a land wherein to become a co-worker in the 
building of free cities and free states on the lines of his own 
ideal? In a word, then, free lands meant free opportunities. 



324 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Their existence has differentiated the American democracy 
from the democracies which have preceded it, because ever 
as democracy in the East took the form of a highly specialized 
and complicated industrial society, in the West it kept in 
touch with primitive conditions, and by action and reaction 
these two forces have shaped our history. 

In the next place, these free lands and this treasury of 
industrial resources have existed over such vast spaces that 
they have demanded of democracy increasing spaciousness 
of design and power of execution. Western democracy is con- 
trasted with the democracy of- all other times in the largeness 
of the tasks to which it has set its hand, and in the vast achieve- 
ments which it has wrought out in the control of nature and of 
politics. Upon the region of the Middle West alone could be 
set down all of the great countries of Central Europe, — France, 
Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary, — and there would 
still be a liberal margin. It would be difficult to over-empha- 
size the importance of this training upon democracy. Never 
before in the history of the world has a democracy existed on 
so vast an area and handled things in the gross with such 
success, with such largeness of design, and such grasp upon the 
means of execution. In short, democracy has learned in the 
West of the United States how to deal with the problem of 
magnitude. The old historic democracies were but little states 
with primitive economic conditions. 

But the very task of dealing with vast resources, over vast 
areas, under the conditions of free competition furnished by 
the West, has produced the rise of those captains of industry 
whose success in consolidating economic power now raises 
the question as to whether democracy under such conditions 
can survive. For the old military type of Western leaders like 
George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry 
Harrison have been substituted such industrial leaders as 
James Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. 

The question is imperative, then, What ideals persist from 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 325 

this democratic experience of the West; and have they 
acquired sufficient momentum to sustain themselves under 
conditions so radically unlike those in the days of their origin ? 
In other words, the question put at the beginning of this dis- 
cussion becomes pertinent. Under the forms of the American 
democracy is there in reality evolving such a concentration of 
economic and social power in the hands of a comparatively 
few men as may make political democracy an appearance 
rather than a reality ? The free lands are gone. The material 
forces that gave vitality to Western democracy are passing 
away. It is to the realm of the spirit, to the domain of ideals 
and legislation, that we must look for Western influence upon 
democracy in our own days. 

Western democracy has been from the time of its birth 
idealistic. The very fact of the wilderness appealed to men 
as a fair, blank page on which to write a new chapter in the 
story of man's struggle for a higher type of society. The 
Western wilds, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, constituted 
the richest free gift that was ever spread out before civilized 
man. To the peasant and artisan of the Old World, bound 
by the chains of social class, as old as custom and as inevitable 
as fate, the West offered an exit into a free life and greater 
well-being among the bounties of nature, into the midst of 
resources that demanded manly exertion, and that gave in 
return the chance for indefinite ascent in the scale of social 
advance. "To each she offered gifts after his will." Never 
again can such an opportunity come to the sons of men. It 
was unique, and the thing is so near us, so much a part of our 
lives, that we do not even yet comprehend its vast significance. 
The existence of this land of opportunity has made America 
the goal of idealists from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
With all the materialism of the pioneer movements, this 
idealistic conception of the vacant lands as an opportunity 
for a new order of things is unmistakably present. Kipling's 
" Song of the English " has given it expression : 



326 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town ; 
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. 
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the 

Need, 
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. 

As the deer breaks — as the steer breaks — from the herd where 

they graze, 
In the faith of little children we went on our ways. 
Then the wood failed — then the food failed — then the last water 

dried — 
In the faith of little children we lay down and died. 

On the sand-drift — on the veldt-side — in the fern-scrub we lay, 
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. 
Follow after — follow after ! We have watered the root, 
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit ! 
Follow after — we are waiting by the trails that we lost 
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. 

Follow after — follow after — for the harvest is sown : 
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own ! 

This was the vision that called to Roger Williams, — that 
"prophetic soul ravished of truth disembodied," " unable to 
enter into treaty with its environment," and forced to seek the 
wilderness. "Oh, how sweet," wrote William Penn, from his 
forest refuge, "is the quiet of these parts, freed from the 
troubles and perplexities of woeful Europe." And here he pro- 
jected what he called his "Holy Experiment in Government." 

If the later West offers few such striking illustrations of the 
relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if some of 
the designs were fantastic and abortive, none the less the 
influence is a fact. Hardly a Western state but has been the 
Mecca of some sect or band of social reformers, anxious to 
put into practice their ideals, in vacant land, far removed 
from the checks of a settled form of social organization. Con- 
sider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourierists, the Mormons, 
and similar idealists who sought our Western wilds. But the 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 327 

idealistic influence is not limited to the dreamers' conception 
of a new state. It gave to the pioneer farmer and city builder 
a restless energy, a quick capacity for judgment and action, 
a belief in liberty, freedom of opportunity, and a resistance to 
the domination of class which infused a vitality and power 
into the individual atoms of this democratic mass. Even as 
he dwelt among the stumps of his newly cut clearing, the 
pioneer had the creative vision of a new order of society. 
In imagination he pushed back the forest boundary to the 
confines of a mighty commonwealth ; he willed that log cabins 
should become the lofty buildings of great cities. He decreed 
that his children should enter into a heritage of education, com- 
fort, and social welfare, and for this ideal he bore the scars 
of the wilderness. Possessed with this idea he ennobled his 
task and laid deep foundations for a democratic state. Nor 
was this idealism by any means limited to the American pioneer. 
To the old native democratic stock has been added a vast 
army of recruits from the Old World. There are in the Middle 
West alone four million persons of German parentage out of a 
total of seven millions in the country. Over a million persons 
of Scandinavian parentage live in the same region. This im- 
migration culminated in the early eighties, and although 
there have been fluctuations since, it long continued a most 
extraordinary phenomenon. The democracy of the newer 
West is deeply affected by the ideals brought by these immi- 
grants from the Old World. To them America was not simply 
a new home; it was a land of opportunity, of freedom, of 
democracy. It meant to them, as to the American pioneer that 
preceded them, the opportunity to destroy the bonds of social 
caste that bound them in their older home, to hew out for 
themselves in a new country a destiny proportioned to the 
powers that God had given them, a chance to place their 
families under better conditions and to win a larger life than 
the life that they had left behind. He who believes that even 
the hordes of recent immigrants from southern Italy are 
drawn to these shores by nothing more than a dull and blind 



328 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

materialism has not penetrated into the heart of the problem. 
The idealism and expectation of these children of the Old 
World, the hopes which they have formed for a newer and a 
freer life across the seas, are almost pathetic when one con- 
siders how far they are from the possibility of fruition. He 
who would take stock of American democracy must not forget 
the accumulation of human purposes and ideals which immi- 
gration has added to the American populace. 

In this connection it must also be remembered that these 
democratic ideals have existed at each stage of the advance 
of the frontier, and have left behind them deep and enduring 
effects on the thinking of the whole country. Long after the 
frontier period of a particular region of the United States has 
passed away, the conception of society, the ideals and aspira- 
tions which it produced, persists in the minds of the people. 
So recent has been the transition of the greater portion of the 
United States from frontier conditions to conditions of settled 
life, that we are, over the larger portion of the United States, 
hardly a generation removed from the primitive conditions of 
the West. If, indeed, we ourselves were not pioneers, our 
fathers were, and the inherited ways of looking at things, the 
fundamental assumptions of the American people, have all 
been shaped by this experience of democracy on its westward 
march. This experience has been wrought into the very warp 
and woof of American thought. Even those masters of indus- 
try and capital who have risen to power by the conquest of 
Western resources came from the midst of this society and 
still profess its principles. John D. Rockefeller was born on a 
New York farm, and began his career as a young business man 
in St. Louis. Marcus Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk 
at the age of twenty. Claus Spreckles, the sugar king, came 
from Germany as a steerage passenger to the United States in 
1848. Marshall Field was a farmer boy in Conway, Massachu- 
setts, until he left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew 
Carnegie came as a ten year old boy from Scotland to Pitts- 
burg, then a distinctively Western town. He built up his 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 329 

fortunes through successive grades until he became the 
dominating factor in the great iron industries, and paved the 
way for that colossal achievement, the steel trust. Whatever 
may be the tendencies of this corporation, there can be little 
doubt of the democratic ideals of Mr. Carnegie himself. 
With lavish hand he has strewn millions through the United 
States for the promotion of libraries. The effect of this library 
movement in perpetuating the democracy that comes from 
an intelligent and self-respecting people can hardly be meas- 
ured. In his " Triumphant Democracy," published in 1886, 
Mr. Carnegie, the iron master, said, in reference to the mineral 
wealth of the United States: "Thank God, these treasures 
are in the hands of an intelligent people, the Democracy, 
to be used for the general good of the masses, and not made 
the spoils of monarchs, courts, and aristocracy, to be turned to 
the base and selfish ends of a privileged hereditary class." It 
would be hard to find a more rigorous assertion of democratic 
doctrine than the celebrated utterance attributed to the 
same man, that he should feel it a disgrace to die rich. 

In enumerating the services of American democracy, Presi- 
dent Eliot includes the corporation as one of its achievements, 
declaring that " freedom of incorporation, though no longer 
exclusively a democratic agency, has given a strong support 
to democratic institutions." In one sense this is doubtless 
true, since the corporation has been one of the means by 
which small properties can be aggregated into an effective 
working body. Socialistic writers have long been fond of point- 
ing out also that these various concentrations pave the way 
for and make possible social control. From this point of view 
it is possible that the masters of industry may prove to be not 
so much an incipient aristocracy as the pathfinders for democ- 
racy in reducing the industrial world to systematic consoli- 
dation suited to democratic control. The great geniuses that 
have built up the modern industrial concentration were trained 
in the midst of democratic society. They were the product of 
these democratic conditions. Freedom to rise was the very 



330 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

condition of their existence. Whether they will be followed by 
successors who will adopt the policy of exploitation of the 
masses, and who will be capable of retaining under efficient 
control these vast resources, is one of the questions which we 
shall have to face. 

This, at least, is clear : American democracy is funda- 
mentally the outcome of the experiences of the American 
people in dealing with the West. Western democracy through 
the whole of its earlier period tended to the production of a 
society of which the most distinctive fact was the freedom 
of the individual to rise under conditions of social mobility, 
and whose ambition was the liberty and well-being of the 
masses. This conception has vitalized all American democ- 
racy, and has brought it into sharp contrast with the democ- 
racies of history, and with those modern efforts of Europe to 
create an artificial democratic order by legislation. The prob- 
lem of the United States is not to create democracy, but to 
conserve democratic institutions and ideals. In the later period 
of its development, Western democracy has been gaining 
experience in the problem of social control. It has steadily 
enlarged the sphere of its action and the instruments for its 
perpetuation. By its system of public schools, from the grades 
to the graduate work of the great universities, the West has 
created a larger single body of intelligent plain people than 
can be found elsewhere in the world. Its educational forces 
are more democratic than those of the East, and counting the 
common schools and colleges together, the Middle W r est alone 
has twice as many students as New England and the Middle 
States combined. Its political tendencies, whether we con- 
sider Democracy, Populism, or Republicanism, are distinctly 
in the direction of greater social control and the conservation 
of the old democratic ideals. To these ideals the West as a 
whole adheres with even a passionate determination. If, in 
working out its mastery of the resources of the interior, it has 
produced a type of industrial leader so powerful as to be the 
wonder of the world, nevertheless it is still to be determined 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 331 

whether these men constitute a menace to democratic insti- 
tutions, or the most efficient factor for adjusting democratic 
control to the new conditions. 

Whatever shall be the outcome of the rush of this huge 
industrial modern United States to its place among the nations 
of the earth, the formation of its Western democracy will 
always remain one of the wonderful chapters in the history of 
the human race. Into this vast shaggy continent of ours 
poured the first feeble tide of European settlement. European 
men, institutions, and ideas were lodged in the American 
wilderness, and this great American West took them to her 
bosom, taught them a new way of looking upon the destiny 
of the common man, trained them in adaptation to the condi- 
tions of the New World, to the creation of new institutions to 
meet new needs, and ever as society on her eastern border grew 
to resemble the Old World in its social forms and its industry, 
ever, as it began to lose its faith in the ideals of democracy, 
she opened new provinces, and dowered new democracies in 
her most distant domains with her material treasures and with 
the ennobling influence that the fierce love of freedom, the 
strength that came from hewing out a home, making a school 
and a church, and creating a higher future for his family, 
furnished to the pioneer. She gave to the world such types as 
the farmer Thomas Jefferson, with his Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, his statute for religious toleration, and his purchase 
of Louisiana. She gave us Andrew Jackson, that fierce Ten- 
nessee spirit who broke down the traditions of conservative 
rule, swept away the privacies and privileges of officialdom, 
and, like a Gothic leader, opened the temple of the nation to 
the populace. She gave us Abraham Lincoln, whose gaunt 
frontier form and gnarled, massive hand told of the conflict 
with the forest, whose grasp on the ax handle of the pioneer 
was no firmer than his grasp of the helm of the ship of state 
as it breasted the seas of civil war. She gave us the tragedy 
of the pioneer farmer as he marched daringly on to the conquest 
of the arid lands, and met his first defeat by forces too strong to 



332 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

be dealt with under the old conditions. She has furnished to 
this new democracy her stores of mineral wealth, that dwarf 
those of the Old World, and her provinces that in themselves are 
vaster and more productive than most of the nations of Europe. 
Out of her bounty has come a nation whose industrial competi- 
tion alarms the Old World, and the masters of whose resources 
wield wealth and power vaster than the wealth and power of 
kings. Best of all, the West gave, not only to the American, 
but to the unhappy and oppressed of all lands, a vision of hope, 
an assurance that the world held a place where were to be 
found high faith in man and the will and power to furnish 
him the opportunity to grow to the full measure of his own 
capacity. Great and powerful as are the new sons of her loins, 
the Republic is greater than they. The paths of the pioneer 
have widened into broad highways. The forest clearing has 
expanded into affluent commonwealths. Let us see to it that 
the ideals of the pioneer in his log cabin shall enlarge into the 
spiritual life of a democracy where civic power shall dominate 
and utilize individual achievement for the common good. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PACIFIC COAST 1 

JOSIAH ROYCE 

[Josiah Royce (1855-1916), one of the greatest American philosophers, 
was born in California and educated at the University of California and 
at Johns Hopkins. From 1882 to his death he taught philosophy at Har- 
vard. He wrote, besides a large number of other works, a history of Cali- 
fornia, "The Philosophy of Loyalty" (1908), and "William James and 
Other Essays on the Philosophy of Life" (191 1). His brilliant defense 
of idealism entitled "Loyalty and Insight" in the last-mentioned vol- 
ume is perhaps the best popular example of his philosophical teaching. 
The analysis below is part of an address entitled "The Pacific Coast: 
A Psychological Study of the Relations of Climate and Civilization," 
prepared for a meeting of the National Geographic Society in 1898 and 
first printed in the International Monthly for November, 1900. Its 
luminous discussion of the distinctive temperament of the inhabitant 
of the Pacific Coast is a valuable contribution to any survey of Amer- 
ican character.] 

I have been asked to describe some of the principal physical 
aspects of California, and to indicate the way in which they 
have been related to the life and civilization of the region. 
The task is at once, in its main outlines, comparatively simple, 
and in its most interesting details hopelessly complex. The 
topography of the Pacific slope, now well known to most 
travelers, is in certain of its principal features extremely easy 
to characterize. The broad landscapes, revealing very fre- 
quently at a glance the structure of wide regions, give one an 
impression that the meaning of the whole can easily be com- 
prehended. Closer study shows how difficult it is to under- 
stand the relation of precisely such features to the life that 
has grown up in this region. The principal interest of the 
task lies in the fact that it is our American character and 

1 From "Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems." 
Copyright, 1908, by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission. 

333 



334 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

civilization which have been already molded in new ways 
by these novel aspects of the far western regions. But we 
stand at the beginning of a process which must continue for 
long ages. Any one interested in the unity of our national life, 
and in the guiding of our destinies by broad ideals, desires 
to conceive in some fashion how the physical features of the 
Pacific Coast may be expected to mold our national type. 
Yet thus far we have, as it were, only the most general indi- 
cations of what the result must be. 

In endeavoring to distinguish between what has already re- 
sulted from physical conditions and what has been due to per- 
sonal character, to deliberate choice, or to the general na- 
tional temperament, or to what we may have to call pure 
accident, one is dealing with a task for which the data are not 
yet sufficient. We can but make a beginning. 

One may say that the main feature of the whole climate, 
apart from its mildness, is the relatively predictable charac- 
ter of the year's weather. In the drier regions of the south, 
wherever irrigation is possible and has been developed, the 
agriculturist often feels a superiority to weather conditions 
which makes him rejoice in the very drought that might other- 
wise be regarded as so formidable. In central California one 
is sure, in advance, of the weather that will steadily prevail 
during all the summer months. Agricultural operations are 
thus rendered definite by the knowledge of when the drought 
is coming, and by the freedom from all fear of sudden storms 
during the harvest season. 

That this climate is delightful to those who are used to its 
routine will be well known to most readers. That it is not with- 
out its disagreeable features is equally manifest to every tour- 
ist. Nor can one say that this far western country is free from 
decided variations in the fortunes of different years. Where 
irrigation is not developed, great anxiety is frequently felt with 
regard to the sufficiency of the annual rain supply of the rainy 
season. Years of relative flood and of relative drought are as 
well known here as elsewhere. Nor is one wholly free within 



THE PACIFIC COAST 335 

any one season, from unexpected and sometimes disagreeably 
long-continued periods of unseasonable temperature. A high 
barometer over the region north and east of California occa- 
sionally brings to pass the well-known California " northers." 
These have, in the rainy season, a character that in some 
respects reminds one of the familiar cold-wave phenomena of 
the east, although the effect is very much more moderate. 
Frosts may then extend throughout northern California, 
may beset the central Coast Range, and may on occasion 
extend far into the southern part of California itself. But 
when the " northers" come during the dry season, they are 
frequently intensely hot winds, whose drought, associated with 
hill or forest fires, may give rise to very memorable experiences. 
But these are the inevitable and minor vicissitudes of a 
climate which is, on the whole, remarkably steady, and which 
is never as trying as are the well-known variations of our own 
northeastern climate. The generally good effect upon the 
health of such a climate is modified in certain cases by the 
possibly over-stimulating character of the coast summer, 
which, as for instance at San Francisco, permits one to work 
without thought of holidays all the year round. In my own 
boyhood it used often to be said that there were busy men in 
San Francisco who had reached that place in 1849, an d who 
had become prominent in mercantile or other city life, and 
who had never taken vacations, and never left San Francisco, 
even to cross the bay, from the hour of their coming until that 
moment. Of course, such men can be found in almost any 
busy community, but these men seemed rather characteristic 
of the early California days and suggested the way in which 
a favorable climate may on occasion be misused by an ambi- 
tious man to add to the strains otherwise incident to the life 
of a new country. 



If one attempts to describe in what way the civilization 
either of the golden days or of the later agricultural period 



336 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

has been affected by the geographical conditions, a student 
of my own habits and prejudices feels at once disposed to pass 
directly to the inner life of the Calif ornian and to ask himself 
what influence the nature and climate of such a region seem to 
have upon the life of the individual mind and body, and, 
indirectly, upon the social order. 

The most familiar account of the California climate in 
literature is Bret Harte's characterization of the seasonal 
changes in his poem, "Concepcion Arguello." The scene is 
here at the Presidio at San Francisco, close by the Golden 
Gate, where the heroine waited for her lover during the long 
years that the poem describes. 

Day by day on wall and bastion beat the hollow empty breeze — 
Day by day the sunlight glittered on the vacant, smiling seas ; 
Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather 

cloaks — 
Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing plain of oaks ; 
Till the rains came, and far-breaking, on the fierce southwester 

tost, 
Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished and were 

lost. 
So each year the seasons shifted, wet and warm and drear and dry ; 
Half a year of clouds and flowers — half a year of dust and sky. 

Now what all this poetry in general psychologically means, 
quite apart from special moods, is that the Californian, of 
necessity, gains a kind of sensitiveness to nature which is 
different in type from the sensitiveness that a severer climate 
would inevitably involve, and different too in type from that 
belonging to climates mild but moist and more variable. In 
the first place, as you see, such a climate permits one to be a 
great deal out of doors in the midst of nature. It permits 
wide views, where the outlines are vast and in general clear. 
As, when you are on a steamer it is a matter of some skill to 
understand what are the actual conditions of wind and sea, 
while, when you are on a sailing vessel, you constantly feel 
both the wind and the sea with a close intimacy that needs no 



THE PACIFIC COAST 337 

technical knowledge to make it at least appreciated, so, in the 
case of such a climate as the one of California, your relations 
with nature are essentially intimate, whether you are a stu- 
dent of nature or not. Your dependence upon nature you 
feel in one sense more, and in another sense less, — more, be- 
cause you are more constantly in touch with the natural 
changes of the moment ; less, because you know that nature 
is less to be feared than under severer conditions. And this 
intimacy with nature means a certain change in your relations 
to your fellow men. You get a sense of power from these wide 
views, a habit of personal independence from the contempla- 
tion of a world that the eye seems to own. Especially in 
country life the individual Californian consequently tends 
toward a certain kind of independence which I find in a strong 
and subtle contrast to the sort of independence that, for in- 
stance, the New England farmer cultivates. The New 
England farmer must fortify himself in his stronghold against 
the seasons. He must be ready to adapt himself to a year 
that permits him to prosper only upon decidedly hard terms. 
But the California country proprietor can have, during the 
drought, more leisure, unless, indeed, his ambition for wealth 
too much engrosses him. His horses are plenty and cheap. 
His fruit crops thrive easily. He is able to supply his table 
with fewer purchases, with less commercial dependence. His 
position is, therefore, less that of the knight in his castle and 
more that of the free dweller in the summer cottage, who is 
indeed not at leisure, but can easily determine how he shall be 
busy. It is of little importance to him who his next neighbor 
is. At pleasure he can ride or drive a good way to find his 
friends ; can choose, like the southern planter of former days, 
his own range of hospitality ; can devote himself, if a man of 
cultivation, to reading during a good many hours at his own 
choice, or, if a man of sport, can find during a great part of the 
year easy opportunities for hunting or for camping both for 
himself and for the young people of his family. In the dry 
season he knows beforehand what engagements can be made, 



338 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

without regard to the state of the weather, since the state of 
the weather is predetermined. 

The free life and interchange of hospitality, so often de- 
scribed in the accounts of early California, has left its traces in 
the country life of California at the present day. Very readily, 
if you have moderate means, you can create your own quiet 
estate at a convenient distance from the nearest town. You 
may cover your house with a bower of roses, surround yourself 
with an orchard, quickly grow eucalyptus as a shade tree, and 
with nearly equal facility multiply other shade trees. You 
become, on easy terms, a proprietor, with estate and home of 
your own. Now all this holds, in a sense, of any mild climate. 
But in California the more regular routine of wet and dry 
seasons modifies and renders more stable the general psycho- 
logical consequences. All this is encouraging to a kind of 
harmonious individuality that already tends in the best in- 
stances toward a somewhat Hellenic type. 

A colleague of my own, a New Englander of the strictest 
persuasion, who visited California for a short time when he 
was himself past middle life, returned enthusiastic with the 
report that the California countrymen seemed to him to re- 
semble the ancient, yes, even the Homeric, Greeks of the 
Odyssey. The Californians had their independence of judg- 
ment ; their carelessness of what a barbarian might think, so 
long as he came from beyond the border ; their apparent free- 
dom in choosing what manner of men they should be ; their 
ready and confident speech. All these things my friend at 
once noticed as characteristic. Thus different in type are 
these country proprietors from the equally individual, the 
secretively independent, the silently conscientious New 
England villagers. They are also quite different from the 
typical southern proprietors. From the latter they differ in 
having less tendency to respect traditions, and in laying much 
less stress upon formal courtesies. The Calif ornian, like the 
westerner in general, is likely to be somewhat abrupt in 
speech, and his recent coming to the land has made him on 



THE PACIFIC COAST 339 

the whole quite indifferent to family tradition. I myself, for 
instance, reached twenty years of age without ever becoming 
clearly conscious of what was meant by judging a man by his 
antecedents, a judgment that in an older and less isolated com- 
munity is natural and inevitable, and that, I think, in most of 
our western communities, grows up more rapidly than it has 
grown up in California, where the geographical isolation is 
added to the absence of tradition. To my own mind, in child- 
hood, every human being was, with a few exceptions, whatever 
he happened to be. Hereditary distinctions I appreciated only 
in case of four types of humanity. There were the Chinamen, 
there were the Irishmen, there were the Mexicans, and there 
were the rest of us. Within each of these types, every man, 
to my youthful mind, was precisely what God and himself had 
made him, and it was distinctly a new point of view to attach 
a man to the antecedents that either his family or his other 
social relationships had determined for him. Now, I say, 
this type of individuality, known more or less in our western 
communities, but developed in peculiarly high degree in 
California, seems to me due not merely to the newness of the 
community, and not merely to that other factor of geographi- 
cal isolation that I just mentioned, but to the relation with 
6 nature of which we have already spoken. It is a free and on 
the whole an emotionally exciting, and also, as we have said, 
an engrossing and intimate relation. 

In New England, if you are moody, you may wish to take a 
long walk out-of-doors, but that is not possible at all or even 
at most seasons. Nature may not be permitted to comfort 
you. In California, unless you are afraid of the rain, nature 
welcomes you at almost any time. The union of the man and 
the visible universe is free, is entirely unchecked by any hos- 
tility on the part of nature, and is such as easily fills one's 
mind with wealth of warm experience. Our poet just 
quoted has laid stress upon the directly or symbolically pain- 
ful aspects of the scene. But these are sorrows of a sort that 
mean precisely that relation with nature which I am trying 



34Q AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

to characterize, not the relation of hostility but of closeness. 
And this is the sort of closeness determined not merely by mild 
weather, but by long drought and by the relative steadiness of 
all the climatic conditions. 

Now, I must feel that such tendencies are of vast impor- 
tance, not merely to-day but for all time. They are tendencies 
whose moral significance in the life of California is of course 
both good and evil, since man's relations with nature are, in 
general, a neutral material upon which ethical relations may 
be based. If you are industrious, this intimacy with nature 
means constant cooperation, a cooperation never interrupted 
by frozen ground and deep snow. If you tend to idleness, 
nature's kindliness may make you all the more indolent, and 
indolence is a possible enough vice with the dwellers in all 
mild climates. If you are morally careless, nature encour- 
ages your freedom, and tends in so far to develop a kind of 
morale frequently characteristic of the dwellers in gentle 
climates. Yet the nature of California is not enervating. The 
nights are cool, even in hot weather ; owing to the drought the 
mildness of the air is not necessarily harmful. Moreover, the 
nature that is so uniform also suggests in a very dignified way 
a regularity of existence, a definite reward for a definitely 
planned deed. Climate and weather are at their best always 
capricious, and, as we have seen, the variations of the Cali- 
fornia seasons have involved the farmers in much anxiety, 
and in many cases have given the farming business, as carried 
on in certain California communities, the same sort of gam- 
bling tendency that originally vitiated the social value of the 
mining industry. But on the other hand, as the conditions 
grew more stable, as agriculture developed, vast irrigation 
enterprises introduced once more a conservative tendency. 
Here again for the definite deed nature secures a definite re- 
turn. In regions subject to irrigation, man controls the 
weather as he cannot elsewhere. He is independent of the 
current season. And this tendency to organization — a tend- 
ency similar to the one that was obviously so potent in the 



THE PACIFIC COAST 341 

vast ancient civilization of Egypt — • is present under Cali- 
fornian conditions, and will make itself felt. 



It remains necessary to characterize more fully the way in 
which the consequences of the early days, joined to the 
geographical factors upon which we have already laid stress, 
have influenced the problems of California life and society. 
From the very outset, climate and geographical position, and 
the sort of life in which men were engaged, have encouraged 
types of individuality whose subtle distinction from those 
elsewhere to be found we have already attempted in a very 
inadequate fashion to suggest. Accordingly, from the first 
period down to the present time, the California community 
has been a notable theater for the display of political and 
financial, and, on occasion, of intellectual individuality of 
decidedly extraordinary types. 

It would be wholly wrong to conceive California individual- 
ity as at all fairly represented by a border type such as Terry's. 
Yet when one looks about in California society and politics, 
one finds even at the present day picturesque personalities 
preserving their picturesqueness amidst various grades of 
nobility and baseness, in a fashion more characteristic, I 
think, than is customary in most of our newer communities. 
The nobler sort of picturesque personality may be the public 
benefactor, like Lick or Sutro. He may be the social reformer 
of vast ideals, like Henry George. Or again the baser individ- 
ual may be the ignorant demagogue of the grade of Dennis 
Kearney. Your California hero may be the chief of the Vigi- 
lance Committee of 1856, or some other typical and admired 
pioneer, growing old in the glory of remembered early deeds. 
He may be the railway magnate, building a transcontinental 
line under all sorts of discouragements, winning a great for- 
tune, and dying just as he founds a university. But in all 
these phases he remains the strong individual type of man 
that in a great democracy is always necessary. It is just this 



342 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

type that, as some of us fear, the conditions of our larger 
democracy in more eastern regions tend far too much to elim- 
inate. In California, such individuality is by no means 
yet eliminated. 

The individuality that we have described quickly revolts 
against its false prophets. In party politics, California proves 
to be an extremely doubtful state. Party ties are not close. 
The vote changes from election to election. The independent 
voter is well in place. Finally, through all these tendencies, 
there runs a certain idealism, often more or less unconscious. 
This idealism is partly due to the memory of the romance due 
to the unique marvels of the early days. It is also sustained 
by precisely that intimacy with nature which renders the 
younger Calif ornians so sensitive. I think that perhaps 
Edward Rowland Sill, whose poems are nowadays so widely 
appreciated, has given the most representative expression to 
the resulting spirit of California, to that tension between indi- 
vidualism and loyalty, between shrewd conservatism and bold 
radicalism, which marks this community. 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 1 

Randolph S. Bourne 

[Randolph S. Bourne (1886- ) was educated at Columbia Uni- 
versity and has traveled and studied in Europe. He is one of the most 
important of the younger contributors to American magazines on social 
and political movements and on education. His most important books 
are "Youth and Life" (1913) and "Education and Living" (1917). The 
pages below are part of a stimulating discussion on the assimilation of the 
immigrant into American life which has come to be referred to as "the 
melting pot."] 

No reverberatory effect of the great war has caused Ameri- 
can public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the 
" melting pot." The discovery of diverse nationalistic feelings 
among our great alien population has come to most people 
as an intense shock. It has brought out the unpleasant in- 
consistencies of our traditional beliefs. We have had to watch 
hard-hearted old Brahmins virtuously indignant at the spec- 
tacle of the immigrant refusing to be melted, while they jeer 
at patriots like Mary Antin who write about "our forefathers. " 
We have had to listen to publicists who express themselves 
as stunned by the evidence of vigorous nationalistic and cul- 
tural movements in this country among Germans, Scan- 
dinavians, Bohemians, and Poles, while in the same breath 
they insist that the alien shall be forcibly assimilated to 
that Anglo-Saxon tradition which they unquestioningly label 
"American." 

As the unpleasant truth has come upon us that assimilation 
in this country was proceeding on lines very different from 
those we had marked out for it, we found ourselves inclined 
to blame those who were thwarting our prophecies. The 

1 From Atlantic Monthly, July, 19 16. Reprinted by permission. 
343 



344 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

truth became culpable. We blamed the war, we blamed the 
Germans. And then we discovered with a moral shock that 
these movements had been making great headway before the 
war even began. We found that the tendency, reprehensible 
and paradoxical as it might be, has been for the national 
clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly 
established and more and more prosperous, to cultivate more 
and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions 
of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead 
of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more 
and more intensely real. Just as these clusters became more 
and more objectively American did they become more and 
more German or Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish. 

To face the fact that our aliens are already strong enough 
to take a share in the direction of their own destiny, and that 
the strong cultural movements represented by the foreign 
press, schools, and colonies are a challenge to our facile at- 
tempts, is not, however, to admit the failure of Americaniza- 
tion. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to 
urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly 
mean. It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been broad 
or narrow — whether perhaps the time has not come to assert 
a higher ideal than the " melting pot." Surely we cannot be 
certain of our spiritual democracy when, claiming to melt 
the nations within us to a comprehension of our free and demo- 
cratic institutions, we fly into panic at the first sign of their 
own will and tendency. We act as if we wanted Americaniza- 
tion to take place only on our own terms, and not by the 
consent of the governed. All our elaborate machinery of 
settlement and school and union, of social and political natu- 
ralization, however, will move with friction just in so far as 
it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence 
that America shall be what the immigrant will have a hand 
in making it, and not what a ruling class, descendant of those 
British stocks which were the first permanent immigrants, 
decide that America shall be made. This is the condition 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 345 

which confronts us, and which demands a clear and general 
readjustment of our attitude and our ideal. 

Mary Antin is right when she looks upon our foreign-born 
as the people who missed the Mayflower and came over on 
the first boat they could find. We are all foreign-born or the 
descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made 
between us, they should rightly be on some other ground than 
indigenousness. The early colonists came over with motives 
no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimi- 
lated in an American melting pot. They did not come to 
adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the 
smallest intention of " giving themselves without reservation" 
to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as 
they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air 
and chaos of the Old World ; they came to make their fortune 
in a new land. They invented no new social framework. 
Rather they brought over bodily the old ways to which they 
had been accustomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile 
frontier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their pioneer 
daring was reserved for the objective conquest of material 
resources. In their folkways, in their social and political 
institutions, they were, like every colonial people, slavishly 
imitative of the mother-country. So that, in spite of the 
" Revolution," our whole legal and political system remained 
more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, 
while in England law developed to meet the needs of the 
changing times. 

It is just this English- American conservatism that has 
been our chief obstacle to social advance. We have needed 
the new peoples — the order of the German and Scandinavian, 
the turbulence of the Slav and Hun — to save us from our own 
stagnation. I do not mean that the illiterate Slav is now 
the equal of the New Englander of pure descent. He is raw 
material to be educated, not into a New Englander, but 
into a socialized American along such lines as those thirty 



346 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

nationalities are being educated in the amazing schools of 
Gary. I do not believe that this process is to be one of decades 
of evolution. The spectacle of Japan's sudden jump from 
medievalism to post-modernism should have destroyed that 
superstition. We are not dealing with individuals who are to 
" evolve." We are dealing with their children, who, with that 
education we are about to have, will start level with all of 
us. Let us cease to think of ideals like democracy as magical 
qualities inherent in certain peoples. Let us speak, not of 
inferior races, but of inferior civilizations. We are all to edu- 
cate and to be educated. These peoples in America are in 
a common enterprise. It is not what we are now that con- 
cerns us, but what this plastic next generation may become 
in the light of a new cosmopolitan ideal. 

If we come to find this point of view plausible, we shall 
have to give up the search for our native "American" cul- 
ture. With the exception of the South and that New England 
which, like the Red Indian, seems to be passing into solemn 
oblivion, there is no distinctively American culture. It is 
apparently our lot rather to be a federation of cultures. This 
we have been for half a century and the war has made it 
ever more evident that this is what we are destined to remain. 
This will not mean, however, that there are not expressions 
of indigenous genius that could not have sprung from any 
other soil. Music, poetry, philosophy, have been singularly 
fertile and new. Strangely enough, American genius has 
flared forth just in those directions which are least under- 
standed of the people. If the American note is bigness, ac- 
tion, the objective as contrasted with the reflective life, where 
is the epic expression of this spirit? Our drama and our 
fiction, the peculiar fields for the expression of action and 
objectivity, are somehow exactly the fields of the spirit which 
remain poor and mediocre. American materialism is in some 
way inhibited from getting into impressive artistic form its 
own energy with which it bursts. Nor is it any better in 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 347 

architecture, the least romantic and subjective of all the arts. 
We are inarticulate of the very values which we profess to 
idealize. But in the finer forms — music, verse, the essay, 
philosophy — the American genius puts forth work equal to 
any of its contemporaries. Just in so far as our American 
genius has expressed the pioneer spirit, the adventurous, for- 
ward-looking drive of a colonial empire, is it representative 
of that whole America of the many races and peoples, and not 
of any partial or traditional enthusiasm. And only as that 
pioneer note is sounded can we really speak of the American 
culture. As long as we thought of Americanism in terms of 
the "melting pot," our American cultural tradition lay in the 
past. It was something to which the new Americans were 
to be molded. In the light of our changing ideal of Ameri- 
canism, we must perpetrate the paradox that our American 
cultural tradition lies in the future. It will be what we all 
together make out of this incomparable opportunity of attack- 
ing the future with a new key. 



The failure of the melting pot, far from closing the great 
American democratic experiment, means that it has only 
just begun. Whatever American nationalism turns out to be, 
we see already that it will have a color richer and more excit- 
ing than our ideal has hitherto encompassed. In a world 
which has dreamed of internationalism, we find that we have 
all unawares been building up the first international nation. 
The voices which have cried for a tight and jealous nationalism 
of the European pattern are failing. From that ideal, how- 
ever valiantly and disinterestedly it has been set for us, time 
and tendency have moved us further and further away. What 
we have achieved has been rather a cosmopolitan federation 
of national colonies, of foreign cultures, from whom the sting 
of devastating competition has been removed. America 
is already the world-federation in miniature, the continent 
where for the first time in history has been achieved that 



348 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

miracle of hope, the peaceful living side by side, with char- 
acter substantially preserved, of the most heterogeneous 
peoples under the sun. Nowhere else has such contiguity 
been anything but the breeder of misery. Here, notwith- 
standing our tragic failures of adjustment, the outlines are 
already too clear not to give us a new vision and a new orienta- 
tion of the American mind in the world. 

It is for the American of the younger generation to accept 
this cosmopolitanism, and carry it along with self-conscious 
and fruitful purpose. In his colleges, he is already getting, 
with the study of modern history and politics, the modern 
literatures, economic geography, the privilege of a cosmopoli- 
tan outlook such as the people of no other nation of to-day 
in Europe can possibly secure. If he is still a colonial, he 
is no longer the colonial of one partial culture, but of many. 
He is a colonial of the world. Colonialism has grown into 
cosmopolitanism, and his motherland is no one nation, but 
all who have anything life-enhancing to offer to the spirit. 
That vague sympathy which the France of ten years ago was 
feeling for the world — a sympathy which was drowned in 
the terrible reality of war — may be the modern American's, 
and that in a positive and aggressive sense. If the American 
is parochial, it is in sheer wantonness or cowardice. His 
provincialism is the measure of his fear of bogies or the defect 
of his imagination. 



Only America, by reason of the unique liberty of oppor- 
tunity and traditional isolation for which she seems to stand, 
can lead in this cosmopolitan enterprise. Only the American 
— and in this category I include the migratory alien who has 
lived with us and caught the pioneer spirit and a sense of 
new social vistas — has the chance to become that citizen 
of the world. America is coming to be, not a nationality but a 
trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other 
lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors. Any movement 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 349 

which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to dye the fabric 
any one color, or disentangle the threads of the strands, is 
false to this cosmopolitan vision. I do not mean that we shall 
necessarily glut ourselves with the raw product of humanity. 
It would be folly to absorb the nations faster than we could 
weave them. We have no duty either to admit or reject. It 
is purely a question of expediency. What concerns us is the 
fact that the strands are here. We must have a policy and 
an ideal for an actual situation. Our question is, What shall 
we do with our America? How are we likely to get the 
more creative America — by confining our imaginations 
to the ideal of the melting pot, or broadening them to 
some such cosmopolitan conception as I have been vaguely 
sketching ? 

The war has shown America to be unable, though isolated 
geographically and politically from a European world-situa- 
tion, to remain aloof and irresponsible. She is a wandering 
star in a sky dominated by two colossal constellations of 
states. Can she not work out some position of her own, some 
life of being in, yet not quite of, this seething and embroiled 
European world? This is her only hope and promise. A 
trans-nationality of all the nations, it is spiritually impossible 
for her to pass into the orbit of any one. It will be folly to 
hurry herself into a premature and sentimental nationalism, 
or to emulate Europe and play fast and loose with the forces 
that drag into war. No Americanization will fulfill this vision 
which does not recognize the uniqueness of this trans-national- 
ism of ours. The Anglo-Saxon attempt to fuse will only 
create enmity and distrust. The crusade against t( hyphenates" 
will only inflame the partial patriotism of trans-nationals, 
and cause them to assert their European traditions in strident 
and unwholesome ways. But the attempt to weave a wholly 
novel international nation out of our chaotic America will 
liberate and harmonize the creative power of all these peoples 
and give them the new spiritual citizenship, as so many indi- 
viduals have already been given, of a world. 



35© AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Is it a wild hope that the undertow of opposition to meta- 
physics in international relations, opposition to militarism, 
is less a cowardly provincialism than a groping for this higher 
cosmopolitan ideal? One can understand the irritated rest- 
lessness with which our proud pro-British colonists contem- 
plate a heroic conflict across the seas in which they have no 
part. It was inevitable that our necessary inaction should 
evolve in their minds into the bogey of national shame and 
dishonor. But let us be careful about accepting their sensi- 
tiveness as final arbiter. Let us look at our reluctance rather 
as the first crude beginnings of assertion on the part of cer- 
tain strands in our nationality that they have a right to a 
voice in the construction of the American ideal. Let us face 
realistically the America we have around us. Let us work 
with the forces that are at work. Let us make something 
of this trans-national spirit instead of outlawing it. Already 
we are living this cosmopolitan America. What we need 
is everywhere a vivid consciousness of the new ideal. De- 
liberate headway must be made against the survivals of the 
melting-pot ideal for the promise of American life. 

We cannot Americanize America worthily by sentimentaliz- 
ing and moralizing history. When the best schools are ex- 
pressly renouncing the questionable duty of teaching patriot- 
ism by means of history, it is not the time to force shibboleth 
upon the immigrant. This form of Americanization has been 
heard because it appealed to the vestiges of our old sentimen- 
talized and moralized patriotism. This has so far held the 
field as the expression of the new American's new devotion. 
The inflections of other voices have been drowned. They 
must be heard. We must see if the lesson of the war has not 
been for hundreds of these later Americans a vivid realization 
of their trans-nationality, a new consciousness of what America 
meant to them as a citizenship in the world. It is the vague 
historic idealisms which have provided the fuel for the Euro- 
pean flame. Our American ideal can make no progress until 
we do away with this romantic gilding of the past. 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 351 

All our idealisms must be those of future social goals in 
which all can participate, the good life of personality lived 
in the environment of the Beloved Community. No mere 
doubtful triumphs of the past, which redound to the glory of 
only one of our trans-nationalities, can satisfy us. It must 
be a future America, on which all can unite, which pulls us 
irresistibly toward it, as we understand each other more warmly. 

To make real this striving amid dangers and apathies is 
work for a younger intelligentsia of America. Here is an enter- 
prise of integration into which we can all pour ourselves, of a 
spiritual welding which should make us, if the final menace 
ever came, not weaker, but infinitely strong. 



DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 1 
Lyman Abbott 

[Lyman Abbott (1835- ) was educated at New York University 
and has been editor of The Outlook since 1893. He is a frequent writer and 
speaker on social and religious topics. This popular and friendly discus- 
sion is one of a series entitled "Democracy around the World," and 
covers clearly but succinctly the chief developments of industrial 
democracy.] 

The other day I noticed a motto on a teamster's cart in our 
village: "There's no fun like work." The cart belongs to 
an original neighbor of mine who thinks himself and sets 
other people a-thinking; and his motto set me a-thinking. 
Is it true? 

True to my experience, yes. My work has always been my 
best fun. There is no game that begins to interest me as does 
my work. I began to wonder whether that was temperamental. 
Or is it universal? If not, can it be made universal? I re- 
flected that almost every kind of workaday activity is also 
employed in a more or less modified form as a recreation. I 
recalled the saying attributed to Phillips Brooks, "It is great 
fun preaching." I remembered what a very successful and 
very hard-working business man once said to me, "It is more 
fun to make money than to have it or to spend it." I recalled 
the pride and pleasure I had seen all sorts of workmen take 
in their work : the seamstress in her stitch, the cook in her 
dishes, the teacher in his pupil, the lawyer in his brief. Surgery 
would be impossible for me. But I remembered how often I 
had heard that surgeons speak of "a beautiful operation." 

I hope that my readers will not lay down this article at this 
point under the impression that I am trying to prove that 

1 From The Outlook, August 17, 1912. Reprinted by permission. 
352 



DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 353 

there is no difference between work and play. Not at all. 
Not at all. What I am trying to show is that nearly every 
activity of mind and body employed in useful work may be 
made to minister to the pleasure of the worker. The toil of 
the farmer, of the carpenter, of the railway engineer, of the 
teamster, of the lawyer, of the teacher, of the surgeon, of the 
preacher, and whatever other toil there is, may be, and often 
is, a joy. My epigrammatic friend is right: " There's no fun 
like work." 

In this article I am trying to give my readers a vision of 
what industry might be and ought to be, but is not — the 
vision as one sees it who believes in democracy in industry. 
Raphael says that "we paint nature not as she is, but as she 
ought to be." I am trying to depict industry not as it is, but 
as it ought to be. 

All natural, normal, healthful activity, whether of mind or 
body, is pleasurable. This is not equivalent to saying that it 
is all pleasant. It is not saying that it is not accompanied by 
discomfort, and sometimes very great discomfort. But if it 
is natural, normal, healthful, it is pleasurable — that is, able 
to give pleasure. If it fails to do so, the failure is probably due 
to artificial conditions which we have created. It is at least 
well for us to consider whether we cannot change those con- 
ditions which we have created, and give back to the activity 
the pleasure-giving qualities of which we have robbed it. 

There are five conditions which the industrial democrat 
desires to see established in industry in order to restore to it 
the pleasurable qualities of which our artificially established 
conditions have deprived it. There may be more ; there are 
at least these five : 

I. We needlessly work overtime. 

Every activity of mind or body uses up some physical tissue 
which must be removed from the body and replaced by a new 
tissue in order that the activity may be healthfully continued. 
The dead tissue must be removed. Living tissue must take 
its place. When the worker works overtime, he becomes, as 



354 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

we say, exhausted ; that is, he is drained or emptied. And this 
is literally true. He is exhausted when the vital tissue em- 
ployed has been drained and he is left with too small a supply 
to furnish adequate energy for pleasurable activity. Of course 
the more monotonous the industry, the more the same class of 
tissues are employed, and the greater is the drain or exhaus- 
tion. The mere fact that the worker can enter upon some other 
form of activity is no indication that he is not exhausted. 
That the men of a factory in a noon hour engage in a game of 
ball does not indicate that they are not exhausted. The ball 
game calls a new set of muscles into play and leaves the others 
to rest. So when one's eyes are tired with reading, he may 
converse. He rests his exhausted eyes and uses his unex- 
hausted throat. But rest is indispensable to pleasurable work ; 
re-creation is indispensable to pleasurable creation. 

In America most of us work overtime. We glorify the 
strenuous life. To be always doing something is our ambition. 
Robert Louis Stevenson's essay in praise of idleness gets scant 
attention. We begrudge the time necessary to wind up the 
mainspring; and it takes more time to wind up the main- 
spring of a man than the mainspring of a watch. We cut our 
nights short ; stay up as late as our fellow-mortals in Europe, 
but are not willing to sleep as late in the morning. We have 
adopted European habits of retiring, and try to keep up 
Puritan habits of rising. We pare off our Sundays at both 
ends ; work late Saturday night because we can lie abed Sun- 
day morning, and go to bed earlier Sunday night in order to 
arise earlier Monday morning, and use Sunday as a day of 
travel to get from one business appointment to another. 

The industrial democrat believes in an eight-hour day for 
all organized employments. It is true that eight hours is a 
purely artificial standard. In some vocations the hours of 
labor should be fewer ; it is doubtful whether in any organized 
industry they should be more. In employments in which the 
labor is monotonous, as in most factories, the hours of labor 
should be fewer than in employments which allow for great 






DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 355 

variety of activity and therefore less exhaustion of particular 
tissues, as in most household work. But we all work overtime. 
And it is inconceivable that a man should work, as some steel 
workers do, twelve hours in the day and seven days in the 
week and retain that physical and mental energy which is 
essential to pleasure in work. If my friend were to run his 
motor car for seven days in succession, eight hours a day, he 
would probably be as tired of motoring as the railway engineer 
is of driving his engine ; and if the preacher were to preach a 
sermon eight hours long, he would be almost as exhausted as 
his congregation. Different persons doubtless have different 
powers of endurance. For myself three hours spent at my desk 
in creative work is as much as I can usually give with profit 
in any one day. The remainder of the day is not given to rest, 
but it is given to a changed occupation. 

This working overtime is wholly unnecessary. One in- 
dividual cannot step out of the mill ; but the owner of the 
mill — that is, society — can order the work stopped. This 
incessant grinding is not required in order to give us food. 
The statisticians tell us that with our improved machinery 
seven men can feed a thousand. Why, then, go on driving the 
mill as though hunger demanded it ? The invention of machin- 
ery has made possible the lessening of toil and largely the 
elimination of drudgery. Says Emerson 

The farmer had much ill temper, laziness, and shirking to 
endure from his hand sawyers, until one day he bethought him to 
put his sawmill on the edge of a waterfall ; and the river never 
tires of turning his wheel ; the river is good-natured and never 
hints an objection. . . . The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, 
light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing. 

And yet, fired by this passion for work, we go on working 
as though our lives depended on it. In fact, our lives depend 
as much on our resting as on our working. Social students in 
England have demonstrated, by actual experiment, that in 
many industries men will produce, not only better products, 



356 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

but actually more products, in nine hours than in ten, and 
better men if not both better products and more products in 
eight hours than in nine. 

It is said that the average life of a stoker on an ocean steamer 
is nine years. James Ford Rhodes tells us in his "History of 
the United States" that the average industrial life of a plan- 
tation slave on the sugar plantations of Louisiana was seven 
years. The industrial democrat desires to see industry so 
organized that it shall prolong human life, not shorten it, and 
enhance the joy of life, not rob it of its joy. He wishes to see 
industry so organized that it shall be a pleasurable activity. 
A first condition is a reasonable limitation for every worker 
in the hours of his work — a limitation that shall give him 
daily adequate time in the repair shop — that is, adequate time 
for rest and for that change of activity which is re-creation. 

II. Only second in importance to limited hours of labor 
are the conditions in which the labor is performed. All that 
science and art can do should be done to make them both 
sanitary and comfortable. There is something preposterous 
in the prevailing fashion of making luxurious the rooms wherein 
we spend the fewest hours of life and taking any kind of room 
for our working-room. The kitchen, the nursery, and the 
living-room ought to be the best rooms in the house — the 
sunniest in winter, the airiest in summer, the most commodious 
and comfortable in all seasons. The kitchen is the working- 
room of the housekeeper and her assistants; the nursery is 
the training-room of the children; and the living-room is 
the gathering-place of the family. In the old New England 
days the parlor was intended to be, what it was courteously 
called, the "best room," and was open only on state occasions 
or perhaps on Sundays. We have inherited this folly from the 
past, and are not yet entirely emancipated from it. 

The same curious disregard of comfort and convenience in 
the rooms in which our work is done and the major part of 
our life is spent has in the past characterized our industrial 
life. We are slowly, but far too slowly, realizing that bad 



DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 357 

conditions produce bad workingmen and bad work. We are 
providing machinery to expel from our mines the air that once 
poisoned the miners. We are providing our factories with 
windows that furnish adequate sunlight, and in summer ap- 
proximately adequate ventilation. We are requiring clean- 
liness, not only in floor and wall and ceiling, but in the at- 
mosphere. We are abolishing the conditions which made the 
head heavy and the heart sick, which begot discomfort and 
bred discontent. Law has done something, public sentiment 
has done even more. There are an increasing number of em- 
ployers who really care more for the health and comfort of 
the men and women in their factories than for the health and 
comfort of the horses in their barns. Only a real though grad- 
ual revolution has brought this about — a revolution bitterly 
resisted by some of our "best citizens" both in England and 
America: and much still remains to be done. Read Charles 
Dickens's description of Coketon: 

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red 
if the smoke and ashes had allowed it ; but as matters stood it was 
a town of unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage. 
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which inter- 
minable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and 
never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran 
purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of 
windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, 
and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up 
and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy mad- 
ness. It contained several large streets, all very like one another, 
and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by 
people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same 
hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the 
same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and 
to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. 1 

How can work in such conditions be fun ? 

1 "Hard Times," Chapter V. 



358 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

III. Not less important than making useful work enjoyable 
to the worker by a limitation in the hours of his labor and an 
improvement in the conditions under which it is performed is 
it that his right to some share in the finished product should 
be recognized. 

The demand for profit-sharing is not the same as a demand 
for increased wages. It is not merely a demand for better 
compensation. It is a demand for a better and more human 
relationship between the employer and the employed, the 
recognition of the fact that the two are working together, 
and that the product of their common industry belongs to 
them both, and should be shared between them upon some 
just and equitable basis. 

It is a common charge made against the modern working- 
man that he takes no interest in his job. Why should he? It 
is not his job. It is his master's job. If he slights his work, 
the loss falls on the master. If he does peculiarly excellent 
work, the profit goes to his master, and to his master the honor 
is given. The workingman is not interested in the product 
because it is not his product when it is finished, and he has no 
share in it. He is not working to produce anything ; he is 
working for a wage. And I do not find that any one complains 
that he is not interested in his wage. 

Let me by a single illustration make clear what I mean by 
profit-sharing. 

A few years ago I went into a little local shoemaker's shop, 
where my shoes had been repaired, and ordered a pair made 
for me. They cost about the same that equally well made 
shoes would have cost in one of the great shoe stores, and they 
fitted me a little better. But I was interested to see the shoe- 
maker's interest in his work and his pride in the fit when the 
shoes were done. His interest was not merely in the price that 
was paid for them, it was in the product itself, because it was 
his product, and the profit and the honor were his. For that 
reason he unmistakably had fun in his work. 



DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 359 

About the same time I heard Mr. George W. Perkins, at a 
public dinner in New York, give an account of the profit- 
sharing scheme which has been introduced into the Steel Cor- 
poration. I pass here no judgment upon the method pursued. 
What interested me then, and what illustrates the point I am 
making here, was Mr. Perkins's statement that the result of 
the profit-sharing introduction has been to make the men en- 
gaged in the industry interested in the industry. The corpora- 
tion had not, he said, introduced profit-sharing as a philan- 
thropy. But, as it paid thousands of dollars every year to keep 
the material machinery in the best condition, so it thought it 
worth while to pay thousands of dollars to make the men who 
operate that machinery contented with their position and 
interested in their work. Mr. Filene, who has built up from 
small beginnings one of the most successful department stores 
in Boston, and gives to his employees both a share in the 
profits of the business and a participation in its administra- 
tion, has found the same results to follow : an almost entire 
elimination of perfunctory service, and a contented and in- 
terested body of co-workers in every department. 

IV. If the worker is to find any fun in his work, he must 
have not only some share in the product, but also some share 
in determining under what conditions it shall be carried on. 
This principle seems to me eminently just ; though there are 
some employers, apparently, who think that it is entirely 
impracticable to apply it in our modern industrial system. 

The Golden Rule has always seemed to me to afford, not 
only an excellent ideal, but an eminently practicable rule of 
conduct. To determine what is just toward any man I ask 
myself, If I were in his place, what should I think I had a 
right to demand ? If I were a railway engineer and not only 
my comfort but my life depended on the fireman who traveled 
with me, I should want to have something to say as to the 
conditions upon which men should be appointed as firemen. 
If I were a miner, I should, for the same reason, want to have 



360 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

something to say as to the conditions on which other miners 
working with me should be appointed. If I were to work in 
a factory, I should want to have something to say as to hours 
of labor and the sanitary conditions of the room in which I 
was to spend my working hours. 

We read much in the daily papers of the "recognition of 
the union" ; and sometimes of strikes maintained with great 
obstinacy, not for higher wages or shorter hours, but for this 
" recognition of the union." Such strikes are generally con- 
demned unsparingly by the daily papers. I suppose that the 
phrase " recognition of the union" has different meanings at 
different times and in different localities. But when it means 
that the laborers are insisting, not merely that they shall have 
better wages or shorter hours, but also that they shall have 
some share in determining what the hours and conditions of 
their labor shall be, I sympathize with their demand, though 
I may not with their methods. The adjustment of this new 
and growing demand of the workingman to have some share 
in the control of the organized industries of the world presents 
many difficult problems. Certainly the direction cannot be 
transferred by any instantaneous process from the autocracy 
which has controlled the industry in the past to the democ- 
racy which will perhaps control it, at least in part, in the 
future. But the history of industry in the past in all civilized 
countries makes it equally clear that it cannot, with safety 
to the workingmen or to the community, be left in the unlim- 
ited control of an irresponsible autocracy. The administra- 
tion of our great businesses has not been so uniformly just, 
humane, and public-spirited, or even so economically efficient 
and so beneficent to the community, that its advocates are 
justified in insisting that no change can be made for the better. 

V. There is one other condition necessary in order to make 
modern work carried on by organizations of workers fun to the in- 
dividual worker. This it is difficult to state, because it is a con- 
dition of the spirit in which the work must be carried on, and it 
is always difficult to define anything so subtle as spirit of life. 



DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY 361 

It is evident that the man in the shoe factory who simply 
puts the eyelets in the shoe cannot have the kind of pride in 
the finished shoe that the individual shoemaker can have who 
by his individual labor makes the entire shoe from start to 
finish. The pride of the latter in his work is an individual 
pride ; the modern laborer's pride in his work must be a social 
pride; a pride in the organization to which he belongs and 
in the work of his fellows no less than in his own. 

A simple illustration of this pride in one's cooperative work 
is furnished by the soldier in the army. His personal contribu- 
tion may seem insignificant. He believes in his commander, 
whether he be General Lee or General Grant, and in his cause, 
whether it be States' rights or Nationalism, and to that cause 
and to that commander he has given himself with absolute 
devotion. Whether he is in front as a sharpshooter, or in the 
rear guarding a baggage train, or in camp cleaning his gun, 
he is a member of a great army, devoted to a great cause, and 
sharer in a great service ; and when the war is over, his country 
will rear a soldiers' monument to his memory and to the mem- 
ory of all his brave comrades. The service is a common serv- 
ice, the achievement will be a common achievement, the 
honor will be a common honor. 

To reach the highest joy in work this consciousness of co- 
operation in industry is necessary. It is necessary for us to 
realize that we are all engaged in cooperative industry ; that 
life is an exchange of services ; that the least and humblest 
of us is contributing to a great achievement which is possible 
only as a combined achievement; that no man is more es- 
sential than another ; that the least work is a great work be- 
cause it is a necessary part, of a great work, as the day laborer 
with his spade at Panama is necessary to the completion of 
the great world waterway between two oceans. Inspired by 
this sense of a great fellowship, any work may become joyful. 
"If," says a friend of mine, "I cannot do what I like, I like 
what I do." "If," says Professor Josiah Royce, " I am to be 
loyal, my cause must from moment to moment fascinate me, 



362 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

awaken my muscular vigor, stir me with some eagerness for 
work, even if this be painful work." 

I am an industrial democrat. I am also an optimist. And I 
look forward with hope to the time when, even more than 
now, machinery will do the world's drudgery and man will 
cease to be a drudge ; when his hours of labor will be so limited 
that his life will not be exhausted, but will be enriched and de- 
veloped by his labors; when the conditions of his labor will 
be always sanitary and generally comfortable ; when he will 
share in the profits of his labor, and so realize the value to 
himself of good work; when he will have a voice, and an 
influential voice, in determining how the organized labor in 
which he takes a part shall be carried on; when commerce 
will be seen to be what the word imports, an interchange of 
services ; when there will be none so rich that they will have 
no incentive to work, and none so poor that they can get no 
work to do; and when the now perilous class consciousness 
will grow into a social consciousness, and we shall all, employer 
and employed, recognize the truth that an injury to one is an 
injury to all, and a benefit to one is a benefit to all. 

Impossible ideal? No! No true ideal is ever impossible. 
Toward its realization society is slowly, very slowly, tending. 
And the great democratic movement throughout the world 
is one of the signs of its coming. 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 1 

Robert Herrick 

[Robert Herrick (1868- ), one of the best-known of present-day 
American novelists, was educated at Harvard and is now Professor of 
English in the University of Chicago. Among his most noteworthy novels 
may be mentioned " The CommonLot" (1904) and " The Healer " (1911). 
This trenchant criticism of contemporary American literature, with 
special reference to the novel of to-day, followed an article in the January 
number of the Yale Review entitled "The Background of the American 
Novel."] 

One hears much of the romantic quality of American life, 
which when analyzed is found to consist for the most part of 
our dazzling performances in conquering wealth and the 
frequently bizarre conduct of the successful rich. The feel- 
ing, still widespread, that opportunities for similar individual 
achievements exist more abundantly here than elsewhere 
continues this romantic note even in the face of sobering 
economic facts. In harmony with the rest of the world, 
American literature is less flamboyantly romantic than it was 
a scant decade ago, but it vaunts at all times a robust optimism 
that verges upon the romantic. We are also told that ours is 
a fertile soil artistically, ripe for a creative period of self- 
expression. How does it happen then, one is likely to ask, 
that the most significant imaginative work of the day still 
comes to us from the other side of the ocean — the best plays 
from Austria and Germany, the best novels from the much- 
worked English field? Why is it that Wells, Bennett, and 
Galsworthy — ■ not to mention half a dozen others almost as 
distinguished as these three — • are writing in England at the 
present time, while in America one would have to strain 
1 From Yale Review, April, 19 14. Reprinted by permission. 
3&3 



364 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

patriotism to the point of absurdity to name any novelist of 
similar performance? In answering this pertinent question 
we shall have to consider incidentally the quality of our 
imaginative life to-day and thus continue the theme of my 
paper in the January number of this magazine. 

We have had a literature in America — not an American 
literature, to be sure, — but a good sort of literature in 
America. The best of it came from the New England group 
of writers — the purest, the most authentic expression we 
have yet had. When Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
and Lowell were writing, New England may have been but 
one province of a greater country, but it was intellectually 
a dominant and fairly homogeneous province. Mr. Howells 
has garnered admirably the last sheaves from that soil. Puri- 
tan America found its ultimate expression in "Silas Lap- 
ham," "A Modern Instance," and "The Hazard of New 
Fortunes." Mrs. Freeman and others have gleaned faith- 
fully the last stalks. Some of their disciples are still trying 
to revive the cold ashes on the hearth. 

Meanwhile, following the more robust inspiration of Bret 
Harte and Mark Twain, a large number of writers have 
risen to take possession of local fields — Cable in the South, 
Miss Murfree in the mountain districts of Tennessee, Owen 
Wister and many others in the varied localities of the great 
West, to name but a few of these fruitful writers. Already 
that period of local literature is passing, and the reason for 
its swift passing is obvious. It was in no sense national, and 
was largely sentimental in its appeal — pretty and pictur- 
esque. The people, the country as a whole, was never re- 
flected therein. It offered nothing, so to speak, to go on : 
it opened no new vistas for the younger generation. There 
is, of course, nothing incompatible with greatness in the use 
of purely local material. Hauptmann in his "Weavers" 
has shown that a great modern labor play can be written with 
a Silesian background of the Forties. More recently, Gustav 
Frenssen has written an important German novel with a 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 365 

Hamburg lad as the hero and a narrow North German back- 
ground. It is the spirit always that counts. The spirit of 
our American local literature has been generally, to be quite 
frank, merely provincial — always seeking the picturesque, 
the sensational, the so-called romantic. And those are the 
elements of any civilization that are most surely discarded, 
swept aside in the flow of national life. Wister's cowboys 
were already romantic memories when he drew them. Social 
settlements, railroads, and hook-worm commissions are eradi- 
cating the picturesque conditions that provided Miss Murfree 
and Mr. John Fox with their material. The Panama Canal 
will abolish the last vestiges of Cable's New Orleans, as 
general prosperity has already effaced the sentimental South 
of Mr. Thomas Nelson Page and Mr. Hopkinson Smith. 
The swift current of our national life has swept into all these 
backwater places and stripped them of the peculiar aspects 
that charmed the story-tellers. 

While these local fields were still being enthusiastically 
worked, we had our romantic historical revival of the Nine- 
ties. Janice Merediths and Richard Carvels were circulated 
by the ton, not to mention the purely imitative output of 
machine-made American historical novels. They were our 
recognition of the pseudo-romantic wave started by Steven- 
son. The preceding generation of school children got their 
history from the storybooks. Then suddenly as we turned 
into the new century, the demand for this sort of imaginative 
solace stopped. Authors who had sold hundreds of thousands 
of these candied products could not sell fifty thousand. Why 
was this? The distressed publishers have never been able to 
account satisfactorily for the sudden cessation in the demand 
for such books and have been seeking hither and yon for "a 
new line of goods" that shall have the same popular appeal. 
What happened to the American reading public? Had they 
become sufficiently educated to go direct to the history books 
for their history, and to " foreign-made literature" for im- 
aginative realization ? It would surely seem so, if we consider 



366 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the steady increase in the number and the sales of so- 
called serious books, and the broadening demand for the 
novels and plays and poems of contemporary European 
writers. 

To understand the situation intelligently, we must first 
realize a great social phenomenon that has appeared, one 
might almost say, since the time of the New England writers, 
— and that is journalism. I mean not merely daily and weekly 
and monthly journalism, but journalistic drama and jour- 
nalistic books. In short, the thing done for the immediate 
moment, whatever form it may take, — ■ that is what I mean 
by journalism. It is not my affair to account for the tidal 
wave of journalism that has swept around the earth in our 
day and reached its height in this country, nor to judge it 
socially or aesthetically. For the moment it seems to have 
crowded serious literature quite out of public attention — I 
mean the ordered, leisurely, imaginative product. And this 
other sort of thing, which I call perforce literature, if it is to 
emerge once more, must absorb journalism and transcend it. 
I am not interested in the moral or aesthetic or educational 
value of journalism. I see merely the facts as they apply 
to that other sort of product in which I am fervently inter- 
ested : I see that journalism because it pays tremendously 
well has drawn into its ranks the more vital writers of our 
day ; that it has insensibly affected the form as well as the 
content of literature ; lastly that it has fed a huge reading 
public with the raw meat of imagination, on which it gorges 
until it has no appetite for more refined dishes. To be quite 
specific, why should we read picaresque novels when we can 
follow the McNamara case day by day? What detective 
story can compete with Burns and the San Francisco 
"grafters," or with the snaky involutions and pollutions of 
the Lorimer scandal? Is "Robert Elsmere" any more pro- 
foundly human and ethical than Judge Lindsey's story of 
his struggle to save the souls of Denver children? The 
point can be indefinitely illustrated by a thousand instances 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 367 

drawn from our newspapers and magazines. And these 
journalistic " stories" are true — or supposed to be — and the 
persons described are real people — or pretend to be. How, 
then, can literature contend in interest with these revelations 
of the actual social life going on around us ? 

For one thing, it can feebly reproduce them, as has been 
the case with our commercial fiction, for example, in the "big 
business" stories, conveniently shaped to the requirements 
of the magazines. Especially in the short story — a product 
that our magazines have made almost their own — ■ incidents 
and types familiar to us through the newspaper are repro- 
duced again and again. The short story of commerce and 
the magazined novel have done more, I believe, to debauch 
our literary situation than any other one thing. They ener- 
vate both writers and readers. 

But all who think on such matters know that neither jour- 
nalism nor commercialized fiction is an adequate medium 
for interpreting life deeply — for realizing ourselves and our 
country. We know that these are not literature and never 
can become such by any perversion of terms. Life is a 
flowing stream, and to mirror that stream with its multiform 
drama we must have some large, organic form — something 
epic in size and in purpose. Every race has had its epics, in 
prose or verse, — its famous deeds, its heroes and its villains, 
its own peculiar themes. Ours cannot be the exception. In 
the modern socialized world these epics must take the form 
of prose fiction. The large, loose form of the novel, so 
thoroughly developed yet not exhausted in the last two hun- 
dred years, resembles the stream of life in its volume, and 
is the only literary form known to us that is adequate to 
the task of interpreting and realizing the complex life of 
our day. To say that it is dead, that the play, or the news- 
paper, or the magazine, has come to take its place, is as 
absurd as to hold that men will no longer rear families and 
build homes for them because they have taken to flats. And 
as a matter of easily verifiable fact, the novel has never shown 



368 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

more vitality, developed in more promising spontaneity, than 
during the last decade, when all the noise has been about 
the play. 

We as a people have not had our due share in this renais- 
sance of the prose epic. Since that boom in the fiction mar- 
ket, to which I have referred, when quarter-million sales of 
favorite novels were not uncommon, there have been com- 
paratively few successful novels from the publisher's exact 
viewpoint. Nor has there been much consideration given to 
the American novel by that minority of the reading public 
that is supposed. to be superior to the publishers' viewpoint. 
For the moment, we seem to have a distaste for our own fic- 
tion product and are going abroad for imaginative wares. 
Witness the success with us, among the intelligent, and one 
suspects among the less intelligent also, of De Morgan, 
Locke, Galsworthy, Wells, and more recently of Arnold 
Bennett and Leonard Merrick, — not to mention such jour- 
nalistic stuff as "The Rosary" and "The Broad Highway," 
both being "English-made." Is it possible that we have 
outgrown the American novel such as we have had, that we 
realize it does not truly represent us, does not satisfy our 
aspirations for self-realization? Do we feel the artificiality 
and the thinness of the pictures it gives us of American life ? 
It seems so. It would be hardly gracious for me to enter into 
personalities and to examine in detail the work of contempo- 
rary craftsmen. I prefer to give four general reasons for 
the inferiority that I find in the American novel, four ways 
in which it is inadequate and not to be considered in the same 
class with the best foreign work of the day. And I am 
thinking only of the more representative and serious novels, 
not of that machine-made product which the weekly and 
monthly magazines provide by the million words. For that 
is a commercial, not an artistic product, and has nothing to 
do with the question, although in passing I may point out 
that America without the aid of protection leads the world 
in this sort of manufacture — machine-made fiction. I am 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 369 

concerned with the sincere efforts for vital self-expression in 
the novel form, not with commerce. 

In the first place, our novels are weakly sentimental. As 
a people we have always been excessively sentimental beneath 
our practical surface. Among the great mass, sentimen- 
tality is one of our blind spots, and "the mass" here does not 
imply poverty or ignorance. "The Rosary," which might 
justly be described as the most sirupy concoction of current 
years, found its immense market among American women. 
But we are no longer as sentimental as the novelists think us 
to be : at least, our more intelligent readers are fast losing 
the vice. The tone of public discussion, the note of the news- 
paper world, no longer has the sickly sentimentality that has 
characterized it largely since the Civil War. Our charities 
no longer dare to put forward the sentimental plea. The 
vice conditions of our cities are not only being exposed with 
sensational candor, but are being met with unsentimental 
efforts at reform. When we consider the verdict of the press 
and of the people upon the McNamara case, we cannot be 
accused of the maudlin, sentimental squint that has often 
made our criminal procedure a farce. But with all the evi- 
dence of a growing appetite for healthy fact, sentimentalism 
persists in our novels. We sentimentalize in them success 
and business warfare ; above all we sentimentalize our women 
— both the amorous relation of the sexes and the home. 
One of the benefits we may expect from the present woman 
movement is that American women will rise in resentment and 
kick over the false pedestal of chivalrous sentimentality on 
which (in our novels) American men have posed them inanely 
for so long. 

But sentimentalism dies hard. It is an insidious disease 
inherited through romance from the miasmatic mysticism 
of the Middle Ages. It has proved peculiarly corrupting 
to art in all forms, because it is the easy means of gaining 
an immediate popular appeal. Therefore sentimentalism 
should be fought hard wherever it makes an appearance. 



370 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Until we as a people are able and willing to look all the facts 
of our civilization in the face and recognize the unpleasant 
as well as the " pleasant," until we demand in our literature 
the same strong tonic of clear-sighted truth that we get from 
science, we shall remain morally flabby — ■ soft. What can 
we expect of a young man or woman who accepts the pre- 
vailing type of serialized novel in our magazines as a true 
or desirable picture of life? As a people, we are far more 
mature than our novelists assume : we have a clearer vision 
and a sterner temper. Publishers say that our novels are 
no longer read by adult persons. The commercial product, 
at any rate, is manifestly designed for the consumption of 
the young person. That is a great pity, for a virile litera- 
ture must represent both a man's world and a woman's 
world — with the interests and the values of maturity. 

Again, our novels are weak religiously. For the most 
part, they avoid altogether the religious side of life, perhaps 
as unfit for the tired reader in his hour of relaxation ; and at 
the best they represent a conventionally or negatively reli- 
gious social world. In a few cases, survivals of the New 
England tradition, they iterate the old Puritan themes of 
sin, self-sacrifice, and regeneration. The Puritan tradition 
is dead, however : for good or for bad it no longer expresses 
the spiritual life of the people. Yet there is abundant reli- 
gious feeling in America. We have always had a strain of 
transcendental mysticism, cropping out in the least expected 
spots, developing latterly into Christian Science and other 
healing cults. The ancient creed of Catholicism still has a 
vital hold, especially in the cities, and the older Protestant 
creeds have some influence in the smaller towns. It is per- 
haps not surprising that these formal religions have not shown 
their influence in our literature. For as a people, our atti- 
tude towards the whole subject of religion has fundamentally 
changed. We demand increasingly an effective religion — a 
religion that shall have its point oVappui on this terrestrial 
abode. Moreover, American life is becoming peculiarly 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 371 

paganized, yet without renouncing a vital religious interest. 
It is not a sensual or self-indulgent paganism, but a vital, 
active, effective paganism, with a popular creed that might 
read like this: "Life is good! I desire to make it better. 
For me life is here and now, and what I can do to make it 
better must be done here and now, and done not by prayer 
and fasting but by strong deeds." All our interest in social 
betterment, which is literally immense, is permeated with this 
spirit at once scientific, pagan, and mystic. But very little 
of this spirit gets into our novels. A lot of it gets into the 
novels of Mr. Wells and Mr. Galsworthy. In these writers 
are felt always the stirrings of a new social and religious world. 
Even when — as in "Ann Veronica" — the medium is one of 
gentle ridicule or irony, the new spirit is found just the same. 
As for Mr. Galsworthy, his work is saturated with social and 
religious speculation of the kind I am describing : his char- 
acters move always in an atmosphere of awakened social 
consciousness that is the special contribution of the creator. 
Our novelists still cling to the old individualistic string, — ■ the 
story of the triumphant industrial pirate and his adventures 
with the stock market and incidentally womankind. Social- 
ism, for instance, which in many of its protean manifestations 
is surely religious, is scarcely tolerated in the American novel. 
Our imaginative writers in ignoring it display the same igno- 
rance of its meaning as have our two ex-presidents in their 
published utterances. 

In the third place, there is our prudery in the sex realm. 
Nobody denies that sex is of profound importance in life. 
Probably more than half of the larger issues of living are 
affected in one way or another by the sex impulse — at least 
are colored by it. One can't persistently ignore half life, 
or give a sentimentally false interpretation to its phenomena 
with any hope of creating a human literature of enduring 
significance. It is easy to be misunderstood in this delicate 
ground, for we have somehow tied up four fifths of our moral- 
ity in sex prohibitions, and any statement in opposition to 



372 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the conventional beliefs about sex at once arouses suspicion 
of gross immorality. No serious writer believes in encour- 
aging " boudoir literature," which is unhealthy, nor in the 
deliberate exploitation of sex " problems" for the sensation 
that may be found in them. But he should not be forced by 
a prudish and fearful public opinion, which is not the opinion 
of the public, into dodging the sex side of life when it comes 
inevitably into the picture as I believe it must. There is, of 
course, the " young person." But the young man, if he reads 
at all, should read what his elders do, and as for the young 
woman, she will get less harm from "Madame Bovary" than 
from perusing one of our sentimental boy-and-girl serial 
stories. Unless she were neurotic and degenerate, she would 
get from Flaubert's masterpiece a truthful picture of sex 
relations that should give her a profound horror of emotional 
indulgence. From the American book she might get an 
entirely false conception of the healthy relations of the sexes, 
from which some day she must awake, possibly with a rude 
shock of experience. And in either case, man or woman, the 
young person must face the facts of life, no matter how much 
we sterilize the reading. All we need is more honesty in 
this matter, and that it seems to me we are fast learning, to 
the advantage of our novels and also of our essential morality. 
Lastly, for a democratic people, as we call ourselves, we 
have a singularly unreal and aristocratic literature. The 
preoccupation of our popular novelists with the lives and the 
possessions of the rich, who perforce are our aristocrats, is 
something amazing. Even that much-read novel "The 
House of Mirth," which came near being the woman's epic 
of our day, betrays this unbalanced absorption in the lives 
of the privileged, with little or no shading of the commoner 
experience. American women must be held responsible for 
this aristocratic taste. They are still by far the chief reading 
public, and they prefer books about rich and luxurious people. 
Their favorite epic still remains the old barbaric one of the 
triumphant male who conquers the riches and the powers of 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 373 

this earth, only to lay them at the feet of his loved one, chival- 
rously surrounding her with all the glories of his conquest, 
and rewarded by her with faithfulness and love. Another less 
childish epic is already emerging into sight — ■ that of woman 
making her struggle for life and accomplishment, conquering 
in an honorably equal strife with her male comrades. Why 
does not some woman write that epic for us? The fact that 
our novels are written largely by women and for the enter- 
tainment of women, is in itself a weakening element in our 
literature. It would be idle to champion a male literature 
as opposed to a feminine one, but our literature should repre- 
sent both sexes and interest both sexes. The man's concep- 
tion of life ought to interest women, and what the woman 
feels about it ought to interest men — if true and not merely 
sentimental. 

To return for a moment to the aristocratic aspect of our 
novels, wealth has been the great American fact for the past 
generation — the making, the conquest, the control, the 
disposal of money. The figures that have fascinated the 
imagination of our people have been the forceful men who 
have taken, often ruthlessly, what they wanted out of life, 
who have directed the economic energies of the race. The 
capitalist has been both our buccaneer and our epic hero. 
So we had for a time a great many business novels that 
described commercial struggles and money conquests. But 
this rich material of the pioneer days of capitalism was 
largely wasted : it never gave us one great epic figure, en- 
during, illustrative for all time of our predatory period. 
The future American will have to go to the magazine biog- 
raphies of Gould, Rockefeller, Harriman, or Morgan to get the 
epic, not to our novels. The pity of it ! For it was the one 
big theme of the past twenty years — the story of the money- 
maker, his inner meaning and his self -explanation. We are 
already passing out of that period of towering industrial cre- 
ators : we have come to the era of luxury and trusteeship — • 
the family life of wealth in the second and third generations. 



374 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

And what we get of them in our novels is a profusion of 
motors, country houses, — Palm Beach and Fifth Avenue. 
We do not get the stories of the little people, and they make 
up the living of most of our ninety millions. As I have said 
in my previous article, our writers belong to the old stock; 
perhaps they too have been easily prosperous. The little 
people — not necessarily the submerged elements of society 
— have got themselves abundantly into modern English 
novels. It is often said that the experiences of the ordinary 
citizen are tame and his soul commonplace. The test of real 
imagination is the power to find the significant beneath the 
commonplace. At any rate, a literature to be truly national 
must concern itself with more than the prosperous classes — ■ 
especially in a democratic society ! 

On these four grounds, then, among others, I find the Amer- 
ican novel to-day lacking in importance, not really represent- 
ative of our richest and most significant life. I find it thin and 
impermanent — ■ and not a little shoddy. Naturally, in deal- 
ing with such a subject in this broad and generalized fashion, 
I am aware that I have ignored certain instances of genuine 
worth — signs, let us hope, of a fuller, richer development for 
our imaginative literature. It is a matter of private judg- 
ment with all of us as to how far I may be correct in estimat- 
ing the trend of the current, as to how significant the scat- 
tered instances of serious effort to create less superficially 
may be. Unfortunately in America it must always be an 
affair of private judgment. For we have no criticism of lit- 
erature worth the name. Criticism along with much else has 
been handed over to the daily newspaper. Our few journals 
professedly devoted to literary criticism have slight vogue 
and practically no weight in the utterance of their opinions. 
We have had no critic of recognized reputation since Lowell 
and seem in no haste to produce one. Our literary criticism 
remains a haphazard affair of personal taste, enormously 
laudatory, cocksure, and ignorant of all but the season's 
grist of books. Just how far this state of things may be 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 375 

another ground for our inadequate creative performance it 
would be hard to say. Under the circumstances, the wisest 
course for the imaginative writer to pursue is to ignore all 
so-called criticism and do his best in his own way, untroubled 
by journalistic chatter. 

Thus far I have been obliged to dwell rather insistently 
upon the negative side of the situation ; and before conclud- 
ing, it would be well to glance at the other side and try to 
see what there is of hope for us in getting a more vital, a 
more representative presentation of ourselves as a people in 
the imaginative record. There is, of course, much to be said 
on this side. Our reading public has expanded enormously 
of recent years, in spite of the motor car, and has become 
more discriminating and more intelligent as well as better 
educated. If it were not true that we are gaining in intelli- 
gence and discrimination, it would be depressing for us to go 
on pouring out of our colleges each year tens of thousands of 
young men and women, who presumably have made some 
acquaintance with ideas and formed some standards of 
judgment. The fact that the reading public tends to split 
up into many different circles, each one demanding its own 
kind of imaginative food, is another healthy sign of progress, 
although it has undoubtedly cut down the huge sales of a few 
popular books. The demand for the works of the more ad- 
vanced foreign authors, which is now quite considerable in 
this country, is also an encouraging sign, because an appetite 
for mature and virile literature once formed cannot be satis- 
fied with froth and frivol. To-day in all our bookstores are 
found the plays and novels of writers that a few years ago had 
to be imported specially from Europe. More broadly sug- 
gestive than these signs is the evidence of general improvement 
in the intellectual grasp of our people : they are thinking on 
tough political and economic problems, trying to realize 
themselves in this twentieth-century life, and the longer they 
do that the more insistently will they demand that life as 
they perceive it be portrayed in the fiction offered them. If 



376 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

it cannot be said that in general the tone of our amusements 
has become more elevated, it is certainly possible to satisfy 
occasionally a more exacting taste at our theaters than 
ever before. Nothing moves by itself in modern society. 
Every interest helps in some way every other interest. To 
make a literature intelligent and virile, there must first be 
an intelligent and open-minded public, and somehow one feels 
that we are getting that faster than we are getting the litera- 
ture. For we await the writer or writers keen enough to 
perceive the opportunity, powerful enough to interest the 
public in what it has been unwilling to heed, and of course 
endowed with sufficient insight to comprehend our big new 
world. 

The material in that world is crying for expression — as 
rich human material as the creative artist has ever had. In 
place of the narrow individualistic epic of the "captain of 
industry," we have the social struggle. That struggle is 
already expressing itself confusedly in our political life, and 
from it must emerge picturesque and powerful types sug- 
gestive to the novelist. Hitherto our novels have scarcely 
dabbled in politics because for the most part we as a people 
have merely dabbled in politics. We are beginning now 
to understand that modern social life must be largely politi- 
cal, that each and all, including women, must take a hand 
in politics if we are to make our destiny something nearer 
the ideal than our fathers have made theirs. Already our 
political life is putting upon the screen certain enticing 
figures for artistic interpretation — not great heroes, perhaps, 
but Americans spotted with the weaknesses of our civilization 
and terribly human. Their types should not be lost in the 
ephemeral columns of the newspapers. As our less favored 
classes become more expressive, we may hope to hear from 
them and have imaginative pictures of those who have lived 
all their lives in the treadmill of American industrialism. 
Certain magazine studies of men and women in factory life 
are the harbingers of a more epic treatment of the labor 



THE AMERICAN NOVEL 377 

subject. Our literature will not continue to ignore for another 
twenty years the daily lives and spiritual experiences of four 
fifths of the people, nor of all those of stranger blood whom 
fate has placed in our social system. In this way, I foresee 
our novels coming to - include the larger interests which 
occupy the thoughts of many of us. It will not be necessarily 
a "problem" or "thesis" literature: the imaginative writer 
ought never to make a propaganda of his social beliefs. But 
he should represent men and women as they are in the struggle 
of modern life, actuated by the serious ideas and ideals of their 
time, not solely as sentimental puppets preoccupied with 
getting married. 



As has been said before, we have the richest background 
in a purely human way that the story-teller ever had offered 
him. It abounds with new notes of character, of situation, 
of theme, of human drama. It is religious, and pagan, selfish 
and generous, adventurous and mean, sordid and splendid, — 
at one and the same time. Our novels should reveal all that. 
They should reflect not merely the lives of the successful, 
the predatory, the indulgent, but also the lives of the small, 
the struggling, the obscure. They should give us not simply 
the sensual atmosphere of prodigal spenders, but the strong 
religious impulses moving in new ways to sanctify our lives. 
I say our novels — not the American novel, which is a figment 
of the newspaper critic's imagination. The newspaper critic 
seems distressed because he cannot find one book that displays 
all these powers and riches. He complacently discovers the 
American novel each season — the one that most nearly 
pleased him of the last consignment. Every year a number 
of these discoveries are proclaimed to be the American novel 
— the epic masterpiece of our civilization. But they quickly 
fall back into the ranks. 

The truth is that we are not yet ready for the masterpiece, 
if we ever shall be, — if, indeed, one epic, no matter how 



378 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

splendid, will ever serve for the complete record. Before 
that appears we must have developed a truly national spirit : 
our society must have a greater solidarity. We must be 
clearer about what we want to do, what we think about 
momentous matters, where we stand' as a people. We must 
lose that excessive consciousness of our individualism that 
characterizes us now, and become more conscious of our 
nationalism. When in spirit and in purpose we are truly 
national, we shall doubtless create a national literature. The 
local and the individual will be merged in the broader type of 
the nation. Then we may speak of the American novel. 



THE PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY * 

George E. Vincent 

[George Edgar Vincent (1864- ) was educated at Yale and has had 
much to do with the administration of the Chautauqua Institution 
founded by his father, Bishop John H. Vincent. While serving as pro- 
fessor of sociology in the University of Chicago, he was in 191 1 elected 
president of the University of Minnesota. Since 191 7 he has been presi- 
dent of the Rockefeller Foundation. Though the Commencement address 
which follows is substantially that which was delivered at the University 
of Wisconsin in 191 1, its characterization of the social aims of modern 
higher education, and its ringing challenge to youth for service to the 
commonwealth, make it peculiarly appropriate for study to-day.] 

Modern students of human nature have changed the old 
saying, "Many men, many minds," into the new dictum, 
"One man, many selves." There is much talk of multiple 
personality. Our complex modern life reflects itself in a com- 
posite person. A man is said to have as many selves as there 
are social groups of which he feels himself a member. To 
maintain a business self which can look a moral self straight 
in the eye, to have a theological self on good terms with a 
scientific self, to keep the peace between a party self and a 
patriotic self, to preserve in right relations a church self and 
a club self — ■ such are the present problems of many a man or 
woman. One way to escape embarrassment is to invite at a 
given time only congenial and harmonious selves, and to ban- 
ish from the company the selves that are discordant and dis- 
concerting. The strong soul is he who can summon all his 
selves into loyal team play. Personality is the name men give 
to this unity of the self, and purpose is the organizing prin- 
ciple. Only as many groups of thought and feeling are schooled 

1 From Science, June 30, 191 1. Reprinted by permission. 
379 



380 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

into cooperation by a well-considered, steadfast aim can a 
man be master of a single self. To be sure, unity of a sort can 
be achieved by one who has a meager company of selves. 
Narrowness, provincialism, bigotry, describe a personality 
in which unity of purpose is won at a sacrifice of breadth, 
outlook, and sympathy. The highest type of personality grows 
out of many far-reaching selves which have been selected and 
organized into unity by a dominant purpose. It is no easy 
task to unify often divergent and conflicting impulses, habits, 
memories, and ideals into a harmonious hierarchy of aims. 
But such singleness of ideal and effort creates power. The 
man of purpose is not to be resisted. Every instinct and habit, 
every picture of the mind, every effort of the will, every emo- 
tion, fits into his scheme of things. He never wanders from the 
path which leads toward the end he has set up. He turns every 
opportunity to account. He foresees problems and is prepared 
to meet them. He confronts difficulties undaunted. He is 
master of a company ever devoted and responsive to command. 
The world submits to great men of single aim. 

In many ways a human group, a family, a community, an 
institution, a nation, is like a personality. Hobbes saw the 
state as a vast Leviathan. Comte conceived humanity as an 
on-going continuous life which sweeps through the centuries. 
Bluntschli endows political society with the characteristics of 
a person. Contemporary philosophers attribute to society the 
mental and moral traits of a vast super-man. The analogy 
is not wholly fanciful. Just as purpose unifies the individual, 
so a common aim gives the human group a sense of solidarity. 
Social consciousness is the well-worn term for this thrill of 
comradeship. The sense of team play that makes the eleven 
or the nine an efficient unit gives us the type. Each individual 
sees the group as a whole, is aware of his own relation to it, 
knows that his fellows share his feeling, and counts upon them 
to act promptly for a common end. A group which cannot 
control its members and rally them in loyalty to a single aim 
lacks solidarity and effectiveness. 



PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 381 

If the university, as an organ of society, is to gain strength 
of purpose, it must have a consciousness of its function and 
duty. Only by such sense of team play can individuals, de- 
partments, schools, colleges, faculties, classes, student groups, 
be fused into genuine unity and rallied to a common loyalty. 
In general, the university ideal is changing from the thought 
of personal privilege to the conception of social service, from 
a preaching of personal culture to a democracy of studies, or 
in another phrase, from culture to efficiency. This does not 
mean that colleges and universities have not always had some 
sense of social obligation. But too generally the privileges 
of higher education were for the favored few who by virtue 
of their special opportunities were set off from the masses of 
men. The growth of democracy has made new demands, has 
widened opportunity, has broken down the barriers of class. 
Even in the old world, and notably in the new, democracy 
has created schools, colleges, and universities, and has char- 
tered them to serve the common welfare. The university has 
become, therefore, especially in this mid-western region, "the 
people's organized instrument of research," or as President 
Van Hise puts it, "the scientific adviser of the state." On 
every hand we hear variations of this central theme of social 
service. College presidents and men in political life, each 
group from its own point of view, insist upon this conception 
of higher education. In this view the university appeals to 
the imagination, it becomes an organ of the higher life of the 
community and the state, it connects itself at every point 
with the industry, commerce, social conditions, educational 
interests, ideal purposes of the commonwealth. 

The university as a social agent is intrusted with certain 
standards of the community, standards of scientific method 
and of truth, standards of technical efficiency, standards of 
cultural attainment, standards of personal character and of 
civic duty. It is only through the creation, the guarding, the 
elevation of these standards that material and spiritual prog- 
ress is possible. The university becomes a trustee of ideas and 



382 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

ideals, a custodian of standards. In the administration of 
these standards the university cannot sacrifice the common 
welfare to individual need or desire. It must exclude those 
who fail to meet the standards of attainment and character 
which the university administers. Favoritism, faltering, com- 
promise, cowardice mean betrayal of a social trust. Nor may 
the standards of the university be provincial and temporary. 
In the words of President Hadley, "the university must be 
judged by the standards which have held for all time rather 
than those of a single generation, or of a single profession." 
The imagination kindles at this thought of a university ex- 
alting the tests of truth and character by which society slowly 
gropes toward higher levels. 

When the mind is possessed by this vision of the university, 
all the careers for which it provides training take on the dignity 
of social worth. Vocations which have been thought of as 
individual widen into literal calls to be servants of the common 
life. The office of the teacher, the function of the physician, 
the work of the engineer, get their higher meaning from their 
value to the community. The profession of the law, so often 
thought of as a field for personal exploitation, is in its true 
significance a social service. " We lawyers," declares Woodrow 
Wilson, " are servants of society, officers of the courts of justice 
. . . guardians of the public peace, . . . bond servants of the 
people." The scientific farmer is in one view seeking personal 
gain, but in a much deeper sense he is diffusing knowledge and 
skill and is raising into higher esteem fundamental industry 
which makes modern society possible. The college graduate 
who has received the training men are fond of calling liberal 
may no longer regard himself merely as a member of a privi- 
leged class. In the new spirit of noblesse oblige he must recog- 
nize his obligation to his fellows and to the community ; must 
remember that "life is not a cup to be drained, but a measure 
to be filled." Such is the ideal purpose which summons the 
modern university to unity and comradeship in the service 
of the common life. When this vision rills the minds of all, 



PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 383 

when it controls their conduct, when it stirs their emotions 
and carries them steadily forward to loyal achievement, then 
the university gains an irresistible power and becomes a true 
expression of the higher purposes of the state, the nation, and 
mankind. 

The university fails of its purpose if its students do not 
catch the inspiration of the common ideal. To generous- 
minded young men and women this thought of the university 
must make appeal. It is the duty of the institution to fix this 
image of the university in the imaginations of its students. 
From the day they enter to the day they leave, this dominant 
purpose, this persuasive spirit should grow ever more potent 
and fascinating. It would be well if students could begin their 
college life with formal ceremony, so that at the very outset 
they might feel more keenly the social obligations they are 
assuming. Admission to the university should seem to them 
initiation into a high calling. It is a pity that they should 
begin for the most part thoughtlessly or with minds fixed 
solely upon personal aims and plans. The state is calling them 
to her service. She has a right to insist that only those who are 
in earnest, who have at least a dawning sense of social duty, 
should seek admission to the public training which can be 
justified only by its service to the state. It should be made 
clear that no one has the right to demand admission as a per- 
sonal privilege. Conformity with technicalities of entrance 
must not blind us to the moral obligations involved. Out of 
the common fund to which all citizens contribute, the state 
erects and maintains not for personal advantage but for public 
good this West Point of science, the arts, and the professions. 
Every matriculant, therefore, by virtue of admission is honor 
bound to meet the state halfway in her desire to prepare 
soldiers of science for the battles of peace. The university 
must unhesitatingly rid itself of individuals who are indifferent 
to intellectual work or hostile to it. After fair test, those who 
fail to show their sense of the university's purpose must be 
dismissed. This is necessary not only in justice to the state, 



384 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

but in fairness to those who show due appreciation of their 
opportunities and duties. 

The dominant university purpose gives a proper setting to 
the activities of student life and to the standards and conduct 
of the groups into which the student community naturally 
falls. The contacts of daily association and searching tests of 
comradeship, the discovery and development of leadership, 
the give and take of social intercourse, the healthy recreation 
of undergraduate life — all constitute an environment which 
may afford admirable discipline. There is large truth in the 
assertion that the university is the world in miniature and 
that it offers a social training which will be turned to account 
in the wider life of the community. But all these activities 
must be tested by the dominant purpose of the university. 
The question must always be, Is this or that out of harmony 
with the ideal of the university as an organ of the common life ? 
Does this student demonstration or that rollicking festivity 
create in the public mind the feeling that the university is 
living for itself and not for the community ; does it foster the 
belief that the university is not dominated by the motive of 
service ; does it create the suspicion that students ignore or 
forget their duty to the state which is making their self -prep- 
aration possible? This is a vital question. So with the student 
groups that play so large a part in academic communities. 
Are these groups working loyally for the common welfare, 
have they due regard for the fundamental things of university 
life, are they actuated by a sense of responsibility for their 
members, do they cultivate tolerance, justice, and good will? 
These are questions which individuals and groups must con- 
stantly put to themselves and answer frankly and honestly. 
The good name of the university is safe only when its members 
feel an obligation to further the common purpose to make the 
university a true organ of the whole people. 

So long as this spirit prevails, no sense of arrogance, of ex- 
clusiveness, of privilege or caste will enter the minds of its 
members. The old distinction of "town" and "gown," the 



PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 385 

traditional attitude of superiority toward those outside the 
walls of the academic cloister, these things have no place in 
an institution dominated by the spirit of social service. Every 
man and woman of the commonwealth becomes in this view 
a supporter and patron of the university, and may expect 
from it good will and loyal service. If to say that the uni- 
versity belongs to the state is anything more than phrase- 
making, every member who has imagination, the power to 
see the institution in its real relationships, must feel the gen- 
uine humility of one who would faithfully serve his fellows. 

If the university is to fulfill its function, it must carry con- 
viction to the people of the commonwealth. It must impress 
them with its purpose, make them see it as a faithful agency 
of the people. The men and women of the state must not 
think of the university as an institution which, because it 
has public support, should lower its standards to admit the 
weak, indifferent, or incompetent, or to graduate those who 
have failed to reach the minimum of attainment. People 
must not think of the university as a place in which personal 
influences can secure special privilege. Rather they must 
regard it as fearlessly loyal to the- common welfare, true to 
high standards of scholarship, truth, efficiency, character, and 
judgment. They must not ask or expect special favors from 
this servant of the whole democracy. 

If the university purpose is to be achieved, the institution 
must seek special ability wherever this is to be found. It 
would be a calamity if only sons and daughters of the rich and 
well-to-do could gain access to higher training. Talent and 
genius ignore the distinctions of wealth and class. A way must 
be found by which young men and young women of great 
promise, however they may be hampered by poverty, may 
gain access to the social training of the university, and be 
freed in large part or wholly from the self-supporting work 
which makes the best scholarship impossible. We must be- 
lieve that men and communities will catch this vision of the 
university and by providing scholarships see to it that no 



386 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

exceptional ability shall be deprived of development for the 
service of the commonwealth. The university would lose its 
power and its ideals if it ever became a place of privilege for 
the well-to-do and not a training school for all who have 
talents and capacities for which the state has need. The con- 
trolling ideal, the mastering purpose of the university, there- 
fore, is not a mere phrase or conceit ; it is a guiding principle 
which finds application to every individual, to every group, 
to every activity of academic life, and organizes these into 
the strength and unity which only a common aim can confer. 
Purpose steadily pursued creates a persuasive spirit, regis- 
ters itself in institutional character. Open-mindedness must 
be a conspicuous trait of a true academic community. The 
very search for new knowledge, the effort to see the relations 
of things, presupposes an attitude of inquiry, a willingness 
to look at an idea or a fact from many different standpoints. 
Open-mindedness toward truth merges into tolerance and 
mutual respect as between the individuals and groups who 
make up the university. Narrowness or prejudice, a patron- 
izing attitude of one group toward another, the discrediting 
of this calling as compared with that, the limiting of the con- 
ception of research to traditional fields of inquiry — these 
things have no place in an institution mastered by a sense of 
loyal duty to commonwealth and nation. Genuine culture 
consists largely in sympathy with many kinds of men and in 
insight into the widest ranges of human life. To live in a highly 
specialized community and to enter with appreciation into 
the activities of one's colleagues in many fields is in itself a 
liberalizing experience. There is place for generous rivalry 
in a great university, but this rivalry must be kept on a high 
level and not allowed to sink into unworthy conflict and dis- 
cord. Open-mindedness, tolerance, high-minded rivalry can- 
not fail, under the guidance of a controlling ideal, to fuse the 
university into a genuine unity of comradeship and good will. 
When each man and each group can see, not only through 
its own eyes but through the eyes of other persons and groups, 



PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 387 

the common problems of the institution, there must develop 
a keener sense of team play, a quickened loyalty, a more vivid 
corporate consciousness. 

The university, a servant of the common life, exalting 
standards of efficiency and worth, summoning its members to 
a common task, must stand for the loftiest ideals. It must 
inspire enduring faith. It must exalt character above tech- 
nical skill, mental alertness, refinement of feeling. It must 
lay hold of the fundamental motives. The university rightly 
aims at leadership, but in the words of Dr. Pritchett, it can 
win this 

only by inspiring the youth of the democracy with a true, vibrant 
living faith. . . . The American university is to-day the home of 
that faith. It is the faith of humanity in humanity . . . and the 
American university, which embodies the intellectual aspirations 
of a free people, is becoming day by day the representative of their 
spiritual aspirations as well. 

The state university cannot fulfill its true function unless it 
rises to the higher level of spiritual idealism. It may not ally 
itself with any church or support any one theology, but it 
must draw its inspiration from an essentially religious view 
of life. As the Sir Thomas More's Utopians tolerated many 
theologies of widely varying kinds, but united in common 
worship of the divine energy back of all nature and human 
fife, so the university welcomes men and women of many faiths 
and rallies them to a devoted loyalty to common ideals of duty, 
service, and reverent aspiration. 

In the "Republic" Socrates, in talking of testing the young 
for leadership, declares, 

We must inquire who are the best guardians of their own con- 
viction that the interest of the state is to be the rule of all their 
actions. We must watch them from their youth upwards and pro- 
pose deeds for them to perform in which they are most likely to 
forget or be deceived, and he who remembers and is not de- 
ceived is to be selected and he who fails in the trial is to be 
rejected. 



388 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

The gentle sage goes on to describe the tests of toil and pain, 
the tests of fear, the tests of seductive pleasures, and he tells 
us that 

He who at every age as boy and youth, and in mature life, has 
come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler 
and guardian of the state. He shall be honored in life and death, 
and shall receive sepulcher and other memorials of honor, the 
greatest that we have to give. 

The essentials of life and character have not changed since 
the days when Socrates talked of truth and justice in the 
groves of Academus. You graduates to-day go forth to be 
tested. You have in varying measure the vision of the uni- 
versity, the sense of obligation which your training lays upon 
you. You must hear, be it ever so faintly, the call to be serv- 
ants of the commonwealth. Put to yourselves the question 
which comes down through the centuries, can you hold to this 
conviction that the interests of the community should be the 
rule of all your actions ? You will face intellectual sophistry 
and beguiling fallacies. Have you the keenness of mind and 
the force of character to analyze these specious assertions 
and to hold steadfastly to things that are true and enduring? 
You will be tested by fear, fear of financial loss, fear of ridi- 
cule, fear it may be of social ostracism. Have you the courage 
and character to preserve your convictions of loyalty to the 
general good ? You will be lured by pleasure, dazzled it may 
be by luxury and ostentation, tempted to self-indulgence 
and evanescent pleasures. Have you the fiber to resist these 
appeals and to remember that the social servant must be 
ever strong, clear eyed, and faithful to his work? 

May you hold to the vision you have caught : may it with 
the passing years grow ever clearer, brighter, more command- 
ing in your lives. The university sends you forth to-day with 
God speed, intrusts to you the good name of our widening 
community, summons you to loyalty, urges you to organize 
all your resources of mind and spirit into the unity of a high 



PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 389 

aim, the firm resolve to realize in your own lives the master- 
ful purpose of the university which is to be in ever fuller meas- 
ure at once the standard bearer and the servant of the state. 

Go to your work and be strong, halting not in a world of men, 
Balking the end half won for an instant dole of praise. 
Stand to your work and be wise — certain of sword and pen, 
Who are neither children nor Gods, but men in a world of men. 



MILITARY CHARACTER 1 

Yates Stirling 

[Captain Yates Stirling, United States Navy (1872- ), was edu- 
cated at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and has served 
in the navy since his graduation in 1892. He participated in the Spanish- 
American War, served in the Philippines during the insurrection, and in 
1913 commanded the submarine flotilla of the Atlantic Fleet. He has 
written many technical articles on the navy and several books for boys 
("A United States Midshipman in the Philippines, " etc.). The present 
selection discusses those moral qualities which from a military and naval 
standpoint may be considered the chief aims of education not only at 
West Point and Annapolis but in any educational program of the present 
day.] 

"A high moral courage capable of great resolutions. A 
physical courage which takes no account of danger. A man 
who is gallant, just, firm, upright, capable of esteeming merit 
in others without jealousy," — this is Jomini's definition of 
a leader of men. 

The great leaders each possessed moral power and intel- 
lectual power to a high degree. Of the two, moral power is 
by far the more important. Moral power, or strength of 
character, is usually a product of heredity and early training. 

For a military leader qualities of character that have the 
greatest weight are decision and good sense. He must have 
clearness in conception and energy in execution. History 
offers many examples to show that after decision one of the 
qualities of leadership which contributes the most to success 
is stubbornness. 

Napoleon was fond of declaring to his less decisive com- 
manders : " Before conceding the victory let us wait until 

1 From " Fundamentals of Naval Service." Copyright, 191 7, by J. B. Lip- 
pincott Company. Reprinted by permission. 

390 



MILITARY CHARACTER 391 

it is snatched from us. Before retiring let us wait until we are 
forced to do so." 

John Paul Jones on board the sinking Bon Homme Rich- 
ard, engaged in a death struggle with the Serapis, when 
asked if he had struck, stubbornly answered : "I have not yet 
begun to fight." Moral power won for him the victory. 

General Grant betrayed this important characteristic of 
military character when he announced, "We will fight it out 
on this line if it takes us all summer." 

A leader, to be able correctly to use his natural moral power, 
must be thoroughly versed in his profession, and thus obtain 
the necessary confidence in his ability to succeed in any under- 
taking. Knowledge alone is not enough ; he must have fre- 
quently applied his knowledge to cases ; in other words, solved 
and executed problems dealing with the elements and prin- 
ciples of his profession. 

Napoleon, before his campaign in Italy, had thoroughly 
trained his mind for war, yet he had not acquired that supreme 
self-confidence which afterwards made him the boldest leader 
of history. This boldness came to him gradually through the 
practical experience of handling armies in the field. It was not 
until the great victory at the bridge of Lodi that he fully real- 
ized his great ability as a general, and gained a self-con- 
fidence that seemed impossible of resistance. 

"The Articles for the Government of the Navy," popularly 
known as the "Articles of War," define the standard of char- 
acter of a "Gentleman and a Naval Officer" in the following 
words : 

"The Commanders of all fleets, squadrons, naval stations, 
and vessels belonging to the Navy are required to show in 
themselves a good example of virtue, honor, patriotism and sub- 
ordination" 

Possessing these four cardinal qualities of character will not 
assuredly produce a leader, yet they are necessary ingredients 
in leadership. No man can be a truly great leader without all 
of them. 



392 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Virtue signifies the quality of manliness, manly strength 
or valor, courage, bravery. Can any one doubt that Caesar, 
Hannibal, Alexander, Nelson, Napoleon, St. Vincent, Farra- 
gut, John Paul Jones, Sampson, or Dewey lacked these? 

"Add to your faith virtue and to your virtue knowledge" 
is an excellent receipt for military character. Also bear in 
mind that "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, but he 
whose noble mind its fears subdues." 

A famous military leader when going into battle could not 
control his legs, which shivered so as to make him fear others 
would observe them and believe he was afraid. He is said to 
have been overheard saying : "Tremble, legs, but if you only 
knew where I am about to take you, you would give way 
under me." 

Virtue demands strong spirit and precludes the weak and 
vicious ; it produces the kind of men that command respect 
and attention everywhere and at all times. With virtue as a 
foundation honor erects a high sense of duty. It gives the 
possessor a subconscious understanding of what is right and 
just. From honor, loyalty, fair dealing, and faithfulness to 
trust naturally flow. Honor causes a person in the performance 
of a duty not to look for reward or punishment, but to scrupu- 
lously execute the task for the task's sake. 

Patriotism is the motive binding us all together in one 
great cause. It gives unity to action. The virtue in the civil 
administrators, the heroism and self-sacrifice of the soldiers 
and sailors, flow from a custom acquired by men of considering 
their nation as an entity. They delight to identify themselves 
with its fortunes, share in its triumphs, and mourn in its dis- 
asters ; ever looking to a future when the nation's destiny will 
be fulfilled. This noble idea of "Country " represents a heritage 
of sentiments, of traditions, of thoughts, of common interests. 
Patriotism is fundamental. We must learn in our childhood 
to cherish and defend this most sacred of all national ideals. 

A nation in whose citizens the virtue of patriotism is securely 
implanted is of consequence strong, vigorous, progressive. 



MILITARY CHARACTER 393 

Without this ideal, a nation will be weak and spineless — two 
traits of national character which inevitably lead to national 
death. Patriotism becomes a passion which burns undimin- 
ished. It exerts the strongest influence for unity; it is the 
moving force in war; it is the ideal for which sailors and 
soldiers cheerfully die, their beloved national anthem upon 
their lips. 

All great leaders understood the power of patriotism and 
seldom missed an opportunity to arouse it in their followers. 
If an army or a fleet is blessed with a true leader, patriotism 
often centers around the personal magnetism of that leader. 
He becomes the embodiment of the ideal of patriotism. It 
is said that Napoleon's presence upon the battle field, in the 
effect it had upon the morale of his soldiers, was worth 30,000 
men. Nelson was given the value of three ships of the line. 

Subordination, the quality or habit of obedience, is indis- 
pensable in a military service. Subordination is an essential 
quality to regulate the relations of subordinates to their 
leaders. Without subordination in a community chaos will 
reign supreme. 

Burke glorifies this attribute of good citizenship in words 
so stirring as to appeal to every patriot: "That generous 
loyalty to rank and sex; that proud submission; that dig- 
nified obedience ; that subordination of the heart which kept 
alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom." 

Virtue, honor, patriotism, subordination, will, self-confidence, 
all go to make up military character. Yet there is another 
and most important attribute for leadership; it is the "will- 
ingness to take responsibility." 

The courage of responsibility is a glorious and divine gift, which 
alone enables a high-placed general to achieve great results ; for, 
if his experience and intelligence are not sufficient, he finds shrewd 
helpers to supply his deficiency. Courage of responsibility is 
born of a certain magnanimity which must be inherent in the gen- 
eral, and which ennobles his whole nature. It is a feeling of supe- 
riority which elevates without making presumptuous. It is moral 



394 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

courage and strength of mind in high development, schooled to 
endure the severest trials without unsettlement of the power to 
reason clearly, and without swerving from the great end in view. 
Thorough knowledge enhances security, steels self-confidence, and 
so gives calmness under responsibility. Ignorance and uncertainty 
undermine it, destroying the power to act with decision under 
stress. — Von dee. Goltz. 

Every leader worthy of the name must be prepared to ac- 
cept responsibility for the acts of his subordinates. 

Ambition, the soldier's virtue, is a valuable military at- 
tribute. It is the desire to excel, to be first, and with it there 
will be continuous and unflinching effort to succeed. "Great 
deeds are impossible without ambition." 

Other contributing attributes to leadership are patience 
and resolution in order to "meet with triumph and disaster 
and treat those two impostors just the same." 

Imagination puts the crowning glory upon the head of a 
leader. It is the creative force. Napoleon attributed his in- 
spirations to memories called up by his imagination. 

Will, ambition, and a love of fame, blended with creative pow- 
ers (a trained and imaginative mind), result in an irresistible 
activity. 

Military history teaches that in nearly every battle, character, 
morale has been the determining factor. We accept the statement 
readily. But the remarkable fact is that in spite of the known de- 
termining value of superior morale, of superior military character, 
and especially of the value of superior military character in those 
who command, no systematic and continued effort has been made 
in our service to examine the ways of creating superior morale, of 
creating a high average of military character in the service. 

We understand academically the several attributes which 
go to make a leader of men, but we seem to take for granted 
that these factors are innate and cannot be developed. That 
this is not true has been shown by many writers on military 
history. 



MILITARY CHARACTER 395 

Military character is a product developed by gradual and 
prolonged application. It does not shine forth except after 
profound studies and in its beginnings, like every creature 
that tries to walk, it is obliged to follow a guide on whom it 
leans. The true genius differs from other men in this, that he 
may soon dispense with his guide to become in his own turn 
a creator. Yet a genius never ceases work on his own mind. 
He constantly builds by the untiring effort of a will that has 
an end in view. 

A study of the life of Napoleon shows that his genius was 
so developed. Education, the will to learn, the concentrated 
life-long effort, the clear perception of the mission, the appli- 
cation of the knowledge and experience gained, all joined in 
an individual of exceptional attainments, served to produce 
the greatest military genius of modern times. 

If such a genius found such measures necessary, if he had 
to endure the labor of preparation to insure achievement, no 
man can be justified in believing he can succeed with lesser 
effort. 

Education first of all must ever be considered the founda- 
tion for genius, the principles underlying cause and effect; 
a clear comprehension of past events. With these there must 
be a precise formulation of one's own ideas, and lastly exercise 
in application. 

Military and naval operations require more than mere 
loyalty. In a large mixed force of battleships, cruisers, scouts, 
destroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries, going into action 
against an enemy's fleet, there is no time for the supreme 
leader to attend to every detail of the impending battle. 
Subordinates must appreciate the situation and act appro- 
priately for themselves. It is therefore evident that in war 
the forces of mentality and character enter most frequently 
and are the dominating forces. Subordinate leaders must act 
to oppose the enemy at every point. To do this effectively 
they must act upon their own initiative. Not independently, 
but in coordinate effort. The quality required is called " trained 



396 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

initiative." It must be based upon knowledge — knowledge 
of their profession and the plan of the supreme leader. Trained 
initiative implies loyalty, not a mere personal loyalty, but a 
loyalty to the plan, to the end to be accomplished. 

''Whoever is loyal, whatever be his cause, is devoted, is 
active, controls himself, is in love with his cause, and believes 
in it." 

Loyalty aims at unity. Full knowledge is a necessary es- 
sential for true loyalty. A subordinate leader with full knowl- 
edge of the plan of the supreme leader uses his trained initia- 
tive and loyally furthers the aims of his chief. The aim, the 
end to be reached, must ever be held before his mind's eye ; 
an act which does not further that end is disloyal. 

Loyalty to the supreme leader must be coupled with loyalty 
from that leader to all his subordinates. 

Napoleon's " system" meant merely that his subordinate 
leaders thoroughly understood the plans, intentions, strategy, 
and tactics of their chief. They had been indoctrinated and 
taught by Napoleon himself ; the workings of Napoleon's mind 
were plain to such soldiers as Davout, Bernadotte, Lannes, 
and Murat. They possessed the trained initiative coupled 
with loyalty to act for the furtherance of Napoleon's aims. 
"A word to the wise is sufficient." Each understood the "sys- 
tem," and they by united and continued effort, without re- 
stricting directions from their chief, won for him Austerlitz, 
Jena, Wagram. Napoleon was loyal to such captains. When 
he ceased to be loyal, when through mistrust in their loyalty 
and ability he failed to make known his plans, then his " sys- 
tem" broke down and battles were lost. Even the genius of 
Napoleon could not give directions at every point of a battle 
field, and subordinate leaders cannot act to further a plan 
whose end in view is not known nor understood. "They do 
not understand my system," Napoleon is quoted to have 
said. Why? Because he had not freely confided in his sub- 
ordinates. No man can be fully loyal either to a cause or a 
plan without a full understanding of it. The desire to be loyal 



MILITARY CHARACTER 397 

is insufficient ; it must be augmented with knowledge to guide 
loyal effort. 

Loyalty naturally involves a surrender of a measure of 
individualism. Proper loyalty in the military sense should 
not lessen individual worth, but, on the contrary, should 
enhance it. 

Self-assertive independence is suppressed, but individual 
judgment and initiative find themselves encouraged. 

To be great within his own authority and prepare for being 
great in a higher area should be the true aim of loyalty. 

To inspire his subordinates with loyalty, a leader must 
have their full confidence. He must instruct them thoroughly 
and carefully in his plans of action, feel sure that each one 
understands them clearly and that all know what results are 
desired, what end is in view. And in addition to this and 
equally as important, he must let his subordinates feel his 
confidence in them and fully realize the limits of their own 
authority in order that they can be prepared to act with 
promptness and decision. 

The following is quoted from a paper written by a young 
lieutenant of the Fleet upon loyalty. It is particularly inter- 
esting in view of the intimate knowledge of conditions por- 
trayed : 

We have all seen unexpected failures of ships officered by ca- 
pable men that could only be explained by a lack of team work. 
Conversely, in seeking the secret of some very successful ships 
manned by officers of only average abilities, we could only conclude 
that they had merged their efforts. Who has not seen the divi- 
sional officer who could not look beyond his own division ? Who 
has not seen the chief engineer who, immersed in his own depart- 
ment, failed to consider the ship as a whole ? A most vital tactical 
error is to send one's forces into action piecemeal ; similarly, dis- 
jointed action in the everyday affairs of the ship will certainly 
ruin her. 

A condition such as might exist on board ship through dis- 
jointed action of subordinates must be laid at the captain's 



398 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

door. He has failed in his loyalty, either through sheer lazi- 
ness or else through lack of confidence in his subordinates, in 
not making plain his plans and his aims and encouraging his 
subordinates to join him as subordinate partners in a common 
cause. 

Decision of Character. — We have frequently heard it 
said of men in high places, "He lacks decision of character." 
What do we mean to convey by this expression? "Sway 
over others is before all else founded upon will. He who 
knows best how to give the most definite expression to his will 
leads." This is axiomatic and the description fits our expres- 
sion " decision of character." Knowledge reenforced by 
practice, thoughtful consideration, a decision, and then will 
or stubbornness in execution, — that is decision of character, 
and he who possesses it will rise high in a military profession. 
In the navy there is no place for an indecisive man. He is a 
destroyer of unity, of confidence, and he fritters away valuable 
time. He dissipates his own energy and the energy of his sub- 
ordinates through "resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, 
suspended." 

Who is there who cannot recall such indecisive characters 
— ■ a man occupying a position of responsibility and trust who 
could not give a decided answer to the least important ques- 
tion where action was concerned? Instead he would hide 
behind such answers as "I'll think it over" or "I'll take it 
under consideration." 

Decision of character is the habit of dealing with each sit- 
uation as it arises with a prompt, clear, and firm reply as to 
what shall be done and the manner of doing it. It is a habit 
and requires cultivation by practice. 

In the cultivation of this valuable habit, a habit most im- 
portant for any man who is in a position of responsibility, no 
matter how unimportant the position may be, the first thing 
to consider is, "What is the task?"; then, "What are the 
obstacles in the way of its accomplishment?"; further, a 
knowledge of and a careful weighing of the means at hand for 



MILITARY CHARACTER 399 

overcoming the obstacles. The reasoning mind by a method 
of pure logic is then ready to give the reply. This process of 
reasoning is long and laborious to the novice, who has not the 
knowledge of either the obstacles or the means at hand of 
overcoming them. Knowledge and practice overcome these 
difficulties. A trained mind can " estimate a situation" with 
the speed of thought ; his " decision" or reply comes so quickly 
after the question is put to him it would appear almost that 
he had rendered his reply without reasoning. But such is 
not the case; his mind " short circuits" from the recognition 
of the task to the decision as to the manner of its accomplish- 
ment merely because the mind is trained. The reasoning be- 
comes subconscious and such reasoning has the speed of light 
itself. 

"The man who seeks decision of character should decide 
knowingly if he can, ignorantly if he must, but in any case he 
should decide." 

Initiative is of two kinds : (1) The power to make starts. 
(2) To act upon one's own responsibility in order to help the 
cause of the Chief. 

These two should not be confounded ; it is the second which 
is of most importance in a military service. It is called trained 
initiative and has been casually discussed above. We are now 
going to elaborate more fully upon the fundamental attribute. 

Thorough and systematic study, education, in other words, 
in order to be able to grasp the principles of the art of war, 
naval or military, must be the base rock foundation upon which 
this initiative can be built. Without a clear understanding 
of these principles, initiative must inevitably lead to a dis- 
organizing independence. 

We all know that a boy of eight or ten years cannot be given 
complete initiative; why? Because the moral and material 
principles of life have not yet been learned. If we could con- 
fine his experiments in initiative in reasonably shallow water, 
and near enough home, it would be the most salutary expe- 
rience for him to let him take his own risks and get, 



400 AMERICAN LIFE AND CHARACTER 

figuratively speaking, capsized. Thus he will learn the wind's 
treachery, the water's danger and discomfort, and his own poor 
judgment and insufficiency without losing his young life, or, 
what is worse, his developing character. He needs to buy as 
cheaply as possible the necessary experience of failure which 
will tone down his willfulness, develop his caution, cultivate 
his dexterity in handling his own craft (himself), practice 
his judgment and his quickness of decision, and give him 
thus a working knowledge of the world. 

For the navy, and those who will join in time of war, this 
initiative must be acquired in time of peace through frequent 
practice. 

It is a very old saying that "We learn from our failures, 
not our successes." No one should be ashamed of a failure 
that occurred through a lack of knowledge, which was through 
no fault of his. Yet do not depend upon learning the many 
lessons through the failures of yourself alone; profit by the 
failures of others. This was the method of all great leaders. 

We have seen that as a base foundation for the development 
of military character we must obtain our knowledge of war 
from both historical study and experience during peace. In 
war, character comes to the front quickly, but in peace many 
officers having the qualities of great leaders lie fallow, await- 
ing only the call of opportunity. 



VII 
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 



THE INTERNATIONAL MIND : HOW TO 
DEVELOP IT 1 

Nicholas Murray Butler 

[Nicholas Murray Butler (1862- ) is one of the most prominent 
figures in American education. He was educated at Columbia University, 
served there as professor of philosophy and education, and has been its 
president since 1902. His writings embrace "The Meaning of Educa- 
tion" (191 5) and "True and False Democracy" (1907). He is the editor 
of The Educational Review. The address below was delivered at the 
first session of the National Conference on the Foreign Relations of 
the United States at Long Beach, New York, on May 28, 191 7. It 
was first published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 
for July, 1 91 7.] 

For two generations it has been a common complaint that 
the people of the United States took no adequate interest 
in foreign policy and were without any but cursory knowl- 
edge of international politics. This judgment has been 
expressed, often publicly, by successive secretaries of state, 
by those who have held important diplomatic posts, and by 
those who, in the Senate of the United States, have seen long 
service upon the Committee on Foreign Relations. A sort of 
national self-centeredness together with a feeling of geographic 
and political isolation have combined to bring about this 
unfortunate state of affairs. It has been unfortunate for two 
reasons : first, because it marked a serious break with our 
earlier national tradition; and second, because it has held 
back the people and the government of the United States 
from making the full measure of contribution of which they 
were capable to the better and closer international organiza- 
tion of the world. 

x From "A World in Ferment." Copyright, 19 18, by Charles Scribner's 
Sons. Reprinted by permission. 

403 



404 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

One need have but slight acquaintance with the writings 
and speeches of the Fathers and with the records of the early 
Congresses to know that, when the government of the United 
States was young, it was the eager ambition of those who most 
fully represented it to play a large part in the international life 
of the world, primarily with the view of advancing those ideas 
and those principles in which the people of the new American 
republic believed and to which they were committed. Ben- 
jamin Franklin was our first great internationalist. Alexander 
Hamilton, of whom Talleyrand said that he had divined 
Europe; Thomas Jefferson, whose public service in Europe 
was quite exceptional ; as well as Chancellor Livingston, John 
Jay, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Quincy Adams, and 
Henry Clay not only knew western Europe, but were known 
by it. In making endeavor, therefore, to increase the interest 
of the American people in foreign relationships and in inter- 
national policy we are but asking them to return to one of 
the finest and soundest of national traditions. 

Our national self-absorption has held us back, too, from 
playing an adequate part in the development of that inter- 
national organization which has long been under way and 
which the results of the present war will hasten and greatly 
advance. Despite these facts, and chiefly because of the high 
character and ability of those who represented the United 
States at the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, the 
American contributions to the deliberations and recommenda- 
tions of those notable assemblies were most important. In- 
deed, when the record of history comes to be made up, it 
may be that those contributions will be judged to mark the 
beginning of a new epoch in the world's history. 

The Conference which now assembles to consider and dis- 
cuss the international relations and the international policies 
of the United States is a beginning and only a beginning of 
a campaign of education and enlightenment which is to con- 
tinue until there has been developed among all parts and sec- 
tions of our land what I ventured some years ago to describe 



THE INTERNATIONAL MIND 405 

as the " international mind." The international mind is noth- 
ing else than that habit of thinking of foreign relations and 
business, and that habit of dealing with them, which regards 
the several nations of the civilized world as free and cooperat- 
ing equals in aiding the progress of civilization, in developing 
commerce and industry, and in spreading enlightenment and 
culture throughout the world. It would be as inconsistent with 
the international mind to attempt to steal some other nation's 
territory or to do that nation an unprovoked injury or damage, 
as it would be inconsistent with the principles of ordinary 
morality to attempt to steal some other individual's purse or to 
commit an unprovoked assault upon him. The international 
mind requires that a nation and its government shall freely 
and gladly grant to every other nation and to every other gov- 
ernment the rights and the privileges which it claims for itself. 
From this it follows that the international mind is not con- 
sonant with any theory of the state which regards the state as 
superior to the rules and restrictions of moral conduct or which 
admits the view that to some one state is committed the he- 
gemony of the world's affairs for the world's good. When that 
doctrine prevails and takes hold of the conviction and the 
imagination of a great people, an issue is presented that cannot 
be settled by vote in conference, that cannot be arbitrated by 
the wisest statesmen, and that cannot be determined by the 
findings of any court. The authority and the value of each 
of these modes of procedure is challenged by the very issue 
itself. Therefore resort must be had to armed force in order 
to determine whether the international mind, shared by a score 
or more of independent and self-respecting nations, shall pre- 
vail or whether the arms of a non-moral, all-powerful, military 
imperialism shall be stretched out over the whole round world 
for its government and its protection. It is to determine this 
issue that the world is now at war. 

Should the cause of imperialism, by any chance, win this 
war, the people of the United States would find it quite un- 
necessary for some time to come to concern themselves with 



4 o6 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

foreign relations and with foreign policy. Those matters 
would be taken care of for them, by a power that had shown 
itself strong enough to overcome and to suppress internation- 
ally minded men and nations. On the other hand, if, as we 
confidently hope and believe, the issue of this war is to be 
favorable to the free self-governing democracies of the world, 
then the people of the United States must address themselves 
with redoubled energy and with closest attention to those 
matters of legislation, of administration, and of general public 
policy which constitute and determine national conduct. 
The first task of this conference and of every similar confer- 
ence that may be held hereafter is to drive this lesson home. 

When this task is undertaken, it will speedily appear that our 
government is not well organized at the moment for the formu- , 
lation and prosecution of effective international policies. The 
division of authority between the national government and 
governments of the several states raises one set of problems. 
Action under the treaty-making power of the national govern- 
ment raises another set of problems, particularly since there 
is not yet a substantial unanimity of opinion as to the scope 
and authority of the treaty-making power itself, or as to the 
proper and effectiye means which should be at the command 
of the government of the United States for enforcing among 
its own people adherence to a treaty obligation into which, 
through their government, they have solemnly entered. The 
difficulties with which we shall have to contend are, therefore, 
not alone difficulties arising from present lack of popular in- 
formation and present lack of popular interest in international 
policies, but they are also those which arise from the structure 
and the operation of our own form of constitutional govern- 
ment. 

That the old secrecy of diplomatic action has gone forever 
is a happy circumstance. This secrecy was well suited to the 
making of conventions between ruling monarchs or reigning 
dynasties, or between governments which represented only 
very select and highly privileged classes. It has no place, 



THE INTERNATIONAL MIND 407 

however, in diplomatic intercourse between democratic 
peoples. The people themselves must understand and assent 
to international policies and contracts that are entered upon 
and executed in their name. Otherwise there can be no assur- 
ance that these policies will be executed and these contracts 
observed ; for without foreknowledge on the part of the people 
of that to which they are committed there can be no successful 
moral appeal made to them to keep their word and their bond 
at a later time when an opposition may arise between prin- 
ciple and immediate self-interest. 

We are assembled, then, to help begin a movement which 
must not cease until the entire American people are interested 
in their international relationships, their international position, 
and their international influence. When that shall have been 
even measurably accomplished, the people themselves will be 
quick to bring about such changes in the form of their gov- 
ernmental structure and in their administrative procedure as 
will enable them honorably and finely to maintain their place, 
not as a nation that lives to itself alone, but as a nation that 
shares with every other like-minded nation the desire and the 
purpose to improve the lot of mankind everywhere, and to 
carry into the uttermost parts of the earth those hopes, those 
principles, and those forms of governmental action that are 
best adapted to giving man the fullest opportunity to make 
himself free, and to be worthy of freedom. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE EVOLUTION 
OF DEMOCRACY 1 

Albert Shaw 

[Albert Shaw (1857- ) "was educated at Grinnell College (Iowa) and 
at Johns Hopkins. In 1891 he established the American Review of Re- 
views and has been its editor ever since. He has written books and ar- 
ticles on political science, economics, and municipal government. The 
article which follows was an address delivered at Long Beach, New York, 
on May 30, 191 7, before the National Conference on the Foreign Rela- 
tions of the United States and is valuable for calling attention to the 
"larger vision" of the Monroe Doctrine which has become merged in 
Pan- Americanism .] 

The power and persistence of ideas lie at the base of all 
historical movements. Policies have a tendency to form 
themselves around doctrines and theories, and in due time 
precedents begin to support policies and to reflect credit upon 
doctrines. The Monroe Doctrine has run some such course, 
until now the tendency has been to glorify it as well as to 
accept it. In order that hope may not die within us and that 
pessimism may not paralyze our power to press forward, we 
are compelled to believe that the millennium is about to dawn, 
that the great war of nations will end in the near future, and 
that in the happiness of a world peace we shall somehow find 
solutions for all the problems hitherto unsettled. I like to 
indulge in these rosy, optimistic dreams, although I have 
observed too much and studied too widely to suppose that 
in plain reality a great war will have enlightened all under- 
standings, chastened all spirits, and made everybody at once 
right-minded and true-visioned. 

1 From Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, July 191 7. Re- 
printed by permission. 

408 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 409 

We shall continue to live in a world that is highly unequal in 
its stages of development. Some parts of the world will be 
much more unfinished than other parts. The future will have 
very difficult questions to deal with that are not involved in 
the present war. Nevertheless, if many great things that we 
deem righteous and just can be established at the end of this 
war, the future course of progress and civilization will be ren- 
dered accordingly less difficult. We shall have our western- 
hemisphere problems, but we shall also, I hope, have found 
improved ways of dealing with them. 

I should like to say a few words upon the relation of the 
Monroe Doctrine to a far larger doctrine that had been earlier 
proclaimed and that persisted in the convictions of some of the 
men concerned with the Monroe Doctrine's formulation. The 
political teachers of the eighteenth century, who were the 
mentors and prophets of the revolutionary period, not only 
proclaimed their doctrines of the rights of man and of political 
and social democracy, but they also held firmly to the doctrine 
of world organization. Europe lost the great vision and en- 
tered upon a period of unrestrained nationalism after the col- 
lapse of the Holy Alliance. But the American leaders, notably 
Jefferson, kept alive both parts of the great conception of the 
revolutionary reformers. That is to say, the authors and de- 
fenders of the Declaration of Independence not only stood 
for democracy, but also believed in the confederation of dem- 
ocratic sovereignties and in the abolition of international 
conflict. 

Thus our American union of states was consciously built 
upon both parts of the great conception of a reformed political 
life for the world. The first part was the democratic rule of 
communities, and the second part was the confederation of 
sovereign states. In both parts we have made a marvelous suc- 
cess of the practical demonstration. This success was based 
not merely upon the doctrines themselves, but also very greatly 
upon wisdom and generosity at moments of crisis. Two great 
steps stand out among others. Hamilton's leadership in 



4 io AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

securing the assumption of the revolutionary debts of the states 
by the confederation as a whole was most admirable in its 
effects. Still more important was Jefferson's leadership in 
persuading Virginia to cede her western lands, with the result 
that the Northwestern Ordinance gave us a series of magnifi- 
cent states while pointing the way toward creating the group 
of states south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. The 
conceptions embodied in the Northwestern Ordinance have 
been projected across the continent. They have given us 
forty-eight sovereign states, not by any means of equal size 
and importance, but sufficiently alike in their averages of 
population and resources to constitute a true and permanent 
sisterhood of commonwealths. 

It was because of the persistence of this great conception of 
democratic self-government in the particular states with the 
common interests of them all merged in the higher structure of 
the confederation, and with a higher machinery of justice to 
deal with possible misunderstandings between them, that 
Jefferson could see no necessary limit to the extension of a 
system thus firmly based upon human equality and universal 
education. He expressed the opinion repeatedly that a con- 
federation thus formed might expect in due time to comprise 
the whole of North America and ultimately to include Cen- 
tral and South America. 

Canada has, indeed, had a different history thus far from 
that which both British and American statesmen had antici- 
pated until a very recent period. Yet the course of things in 
the Dominion of Canada has not, upon the whole, been widely 
divergent from that which Jefferson and others had predicted. 
The great northwestern areas have been divided into states, 
in each of which — as in Manitoba and the rest — there is now 
to be found a thoroughly modern and strictly democratic 
government, with all the attributes of autonomy. The Cana- 
dian states, from the maritime communities of the east to 
British Columbia on the west, are united in a confederacy that 
is quite in harmony with the Jeffersonian conception. So 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 



411 



closely akin are the essential principles that control the individ- 
ual states and the Canadian confederation with the prin- 
ciples that control our individual states and our union, that 
there is visible an increasing harmony between the two halves 
of the North American continent. There is practically little 
more danger that Michigan will quarrel with Ontario, or that 
Minnesota will quarrel with Manitoba, than that either Michi- 
gan or Minnesota will quarrel with Wisconsin. I hope and 
believe, however, that in case of a quarrel, as over a boundary 
line, there may in due time be an authoritative tribunal as 
between Alberta and Montana, so that the diplomatic methods 
of the past that dealt with the Maine boundary and the Alaska 
boundary may be superseded by an institution more analogous 
to our Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that North America 
has upon the whole worked out fairly well the eighteenth-cen- 
tury conception of the democratic autonomy of states and the 
confederation of neighboring commonwealths extending over 
continental areas. 

Jefferson and the men of his time undoubtedly realized that 
democratic institutions could not be so easily developed where 
people were lacking in homogeneity or were made up of races 
lacking in education and unequal in economic development and 
position. Yet those statesmen of the revolutionary period had 
supreme faith in democracy, and they were not so contemptu- 
ous of the so-called inferior or backward races. 

The Monroe Doctrine was inspired by two things : first, a 
large vision; and second, an exigency of statesmanship. I 
shall not, I am sure, be thought to touch upon matters of his- 
torical controversy when I ascribe the Monroe Doctrine to 
Jefferson in so far as the larger vision is concerned. His 
correspondence with Monroe affords all the evidence that one 
needs. For the statesmanship of John Quincy Adams I have 
the most unqualified regard, as also I have for the Pan-Ameri- 
canism of Henry Clay and those of his school. The independ- 
ence of Latin America was favored by our political leaders 
and thinkers in the United States as the great preliminary step. 



4 i2 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

There were also those in Latin America who cherished the 
earlier ideals of the French Revolution, and who believed 
both in democracy and in the federation of states for the 
preservation of peace. It was plain enough that even with 
admirable paper constitutions prescribing democracy, it would 
be a painful task to build up the intelligent and capable body 
of democratic citizens without which mere paper institutions 
cannot give freedom or security. But Jefferson, Adams, Mon- 
roe, and their contemporaries believed that Latin America 
would have a better future if it were free to go on in its own 
way creating through arduous experience the reality of a series 
of democratic republics, than if it were brought back under the 
yoke of European colonialism by the united military and 
naval efforts of the emperors of the Holy Alliance and the 
Spanish crown. 

It is true that the nature and the motives of the Monroe 
Doctrine have been construed in different ways at dif- 
ferent times by statesmen in Europe, in South America, 
and in North America. These different constructions have 
been due chiefly to practical problems involving the possible 
application of the doctrine. It can never be rightly or fully 
understood, however, unless one keeps in mind not only the 
historical circumstances but the political doctrines and the 
large visions under which it had its origin. 

I repeat, then, that the conception of the American union 
of self-governing states was in no small measure the outgrowth 
of that still larger conception of world federation and per- 
petual peace that German and British thinkers, as well as 
French and American, were entertaining in the latter part of 
the eighteenth century. The Monroe Doctrine was intended 
to save the whole of the western hemisphere for the processes of 
democracy and interstate organization, for the abolition of war 
and the promotion of the concerns of the common civilization. 

I have never had much respect for that view of the Monroe 
Doctrine which has made foreigners think of it as a sort of 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 413 

Yankee jingoism. Doubtless at certain times and in certain 
aspects our own national interests have been involved in the 
assertion that Europe must not meddle in western-hemisphere 
affairs. We have desired to keep the western world from be- 
coming militaristic, and in this sense we have helped to make 
the Monroe Doctrine a success. From the Straits of Magellan 
to Baffin's Bay and the Northwest Passage, there has been no 
state or community that has founded itself upon the doctrine 
of military power as against its neighbors. For a region so 
relatively undeveloped in natural resources, and so far from 
maturity in the creation of its bodies politic, South America 
in recent decades has been singularly free from the din of 
arms. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile have learned to be good 
neighbors ; and there is little evidence anywhere in Latin 
America of the existence in any country of a party or a leader- 
ship that has in mind the securing of a dominant position as 
among neighbors by the militarizing of national resources on 
the European model. 

It was precisely to prevent the growth of such military 
policies, and to encourage friendly and helpful inter-relation- 
ships among the American democracies, that the men of 
Monroe's time took their stand against the extension to the 
western hemisphere of the European system of exploited 
colonies. The survival of that system in Cuba remained as 
an awful example and a standing justification of the prin- 
ciples that Monroe and Adams enunciated and that Mr. 
Canning seems to have supported. 

It is necessary, I think, to have this larger vision in mind 
in order to judge at times of the value of practical applica- 
tions. It happens that the confederation of our forty-eight 
sovereign states becomes relatively less a confederacy of sov- 
ereigns, and relatively more a national union of subordinate 
parts, simply because of the great homogeneity of the older 
American stock and the wide distribution of our newer immi- 
grant elements. But for these facts the states would be 
relatively more individual and the union would not absorb 



414 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

power quite so easily. I am making this remark because of 
its relation to the future of entities that have distinct popu- 
lations. Thus, Porto Rico can derive security and much 
economic and social progress from her place in our confedera- 
tion while exercising democratic self-government according 
to the genius of her own people and with the enjoyment of 
her own language and customs. Cuba, in turn, can, for pur- 
poses of international policy, derive benefit from a limited 
connection with our confederacy while working out her own 
destiny as a self-governing people. I am of opinion that the 
two principles of democracy and confederation may also secure 
for all of the Central American states, and even for Mexico, 
some advantages from special or limited partnerships in our 
confederation, with full freedom of domestic evolution. 

As respects the larger nations of South America, the Monroe 
Doctrine has become for them and us merely a family concern. 
As against European imperialistic assertions, we may indeed 
at times have been justified in declaring that ours was the 
place of leadership in the western hemisphere, and that we 
would make it our business to see that no small American 
state should be treated by any European empire as Serbia 
was treated in 1914 by the government at Vienna. But, as 
among ourselves in the western hemisphere, it was not the 
purpose of the Monroe Doctrine to create or set up a position 
of overlordship. Much less was it any part of our doctrine 
that Europe must find her spheres of interest and exploitation 
in Asia and Africa in order that we might have the western 
hemisphere as our sphere of commercial or political exploita- 
tion. So far as Brazil and the other larger and more stable 
republics are concerned, the Monroe Doctrine is to be in- 
terpreted as one of mutual help and good understanding. 
We seek increasing friendship with our South American 
neighbors and rejoice in their progress and welfare. 

It is entirely in accord with the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine 
that the Pan-American Union has been established, and that 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 415 

the various Pan-American conferences have been held from 
time to time. Our interests in the European struggle were 
identical with those which we asserted in the period of the 
Monroe Doctrine. We stand now, as then, for Democracy, 
Liberty, non-militarism, and friendly adjustments for all 
international differences. We have joined in the war against 
Germany, not to help one set of European powers obtain the 
advantage over another group of powers for selfish reasons 
of their own, but because the interests of all the American 
republics, as of democracies everywhere, were imperiled 
everywhere by the methods which Germany had adopted, 
and by the doctrines and policies that Germany and her 
allies were supporting with an organized application, such 
as the world had never seen, of science and skill to military 
ends. 

The Monroe Doctrine was a part of that larger message of 
peace, democracy, and universal friendship that the best 
thinkers of modern times had delivered to Europe and America 
in the latter part of the eighteenth century. With many 
blemishes, but faithful in the main, North America and 
South America have gone forward trying to realize in prac- 
tice those great dreams of Democracy and International 
Peace. Over against these high doctrines, announced in the 
eighteenth century by utilitarian philosophers and Christian 
moralists alike, we are now combating the destructive and 
hideous doctrine of the right to dominate in the affairs of 
the world by unrestrained force. 

The object of the Monroe Doctrine was the peaceful evolu- 
tion of Democracy in the western hemisphere. Our particular 
interest in the war against Germany is in strict fulfillment 
of the aims of the Monroe Doctrine. We are fighting for the 
rights of Democracy and the claims of International Peace. 
Fundamentally, the whole of the western hemisphere, South 
America no less than North America, had become imperiled 
by the doctrines and methods of Germany and her allies. 
The cause of the United States in this war, therefore, is also 



416 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

the cause of Brazil and other South American republics. 
We are entitled to the moral support, if not to the physical 
aid, of all the members of the Pan-American Union. If in 
this crisis the western hemisphere shall see alike, it will be 
fortunate indeed for the future relations of the United States 
with the sister republics of South America, and the com- 
munities of the mainland and of the islands around the 
Caribbean. 



OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY 1 
Richard Olney 

[Richard Olney (1835-1917) was educated at Brown and Harvard 
universities and was a member of President Cleveland's Cabinet from 
1893 to 1897, first as Attorney- General and then as Secretary of State. 
The chief incident of his term of office was the Venezuela Affair, in which 
the United States by a rather tart note induced Great Britain to refer 
her boundary dispute with Venezuela to arbitration. The present 
discussion is valuable for showing clearly the chief recent development of 
the Monroe Doctrine since President Wilson took office.] 

Twenty years ago a practical application of the Monroe 
Doctrine seemed to be called for and was made. Subsequent 
events have not weakened it, but rather enlarged its scope 
and increased the esteem in which our people hold it. 

The relations between the United States and the countries 
of South and Central America — commonly spoken of col- 
lectively as Latin America — have as a rule been friendly, 
though not intimate. Those countries on the one hand have 
relied for their commercial and financial connections almost 
wholly upon Europe and treated their relations with the 
United States as mostly official and perfunctory. The United 
States, on the other hand, has viewed those relations in pretty 
much the same way, while until within a very short time our 
capitalists, producers, and manufacturers have failed to realize 
the advantages of trade and intercourse with the peoples of 
the South American continent. The one marked exception 
to this condition of things has been the Monroe Doctrine — 
a policy whereby the United States declares itself prepared 
to resist any aggression by a European state upon the inde- 
pendence or territorial integrity of any other American state. 

1 From North American Review, February, 1916. Reprinted by permission. 

4i7 



418 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

The policy simply means protection and security for any 
other American state, and, maintained and exercised in good 
faith, cannot easily be objected to by any other American state. 
In that view it is a policy directed against Europe only, and 
until recently it represented our entire Latin- American policy. 

Within a short period, however, the United States has 
developed a distinctive rule of action in respect of Latin 
America, which in one sense certainly is in the interest of 
Europe and not against it, and whose only connection with 
the Monroe Doctrine is the desire and purpose of the United 
States to avoid any clash with Europe over the practical 
application of the Doctrine. Perhaps what has been done in 
the course of developing the new policy may be considered 
as a tacit acknowledgment and acceptance of the claims of 
European jurists and statesmen that if the United States 
assumes to protect the political independence and territorial 
integrity of other American states it must see to it that such 
states abide by and perform their international duties and 
obligations. At all events, that is what the United States 
has been doing and is doing with the acquiescence of Euro- 
pean states in various well-known instances. Instead of 
standing by and looking on while a European state enforces 
its international rights as against a lawless or defaulting 
American state, the United States has intervened, has in 
effect warned the European state concerned off the premises, 
and has itself caused international justice to be done. It has 
undertaken the protection of the lives and property of Euro- 
peans when threatened by riots and revolutionary move- 
ments. It has exacted indemnities and penalties for injuries 
suffered by them, and has collected debts for European states 
and their citizens by occupying ports and collecting and ap- 
plying customs revenues. In cases of this sort it has, in 
effect, charged itself with duties and trusts analogous to 
those devolving upon the receiver of a bankrupt corporation. 

Consequently, whether the supplemental policy above 
sketched is or is not the logical and inevitable sequence of 



OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY 419 

the Monroe Doctrine, it is now no longer aimed at Europe 
only, but also trenches upon American states themselves. It 
is a policy, indeed, which as respects such states impairs 
their independence. It does not alter the case that the inter- 
vention of the United States in the manner described may be 
for the best good of such states. Such intervention is in 
clear conflict with the basic principle of international law, 
which asserts the absolute equality inter sese of all states, 
great and small. 

But our Latin- American policy, hitherto practically lim- 
ited to the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries, has neces- 
sarily taken on a wholly new development by reason of our 
acquisition of the Panama Canal and the Panama Zone. The 
United States is now a South American power, with exten- 
sive territorial interests acquired at immense cost. It holds 
the Canal in double trust — on the one hand for the people 
of the United States, on whose behalf it is bound to make 
the operation of the Canal efficient and, if possible, fairly 
remunerative; on the other hand for the world at large, on 
whose behalf it is pledged to give to all nations the like facil- 
ities in the use of the Canal upon equal terms. In both rela- 
tions it has assumed to protect the Canal against all assaults 
from every quarter, whether they come in the shape of mili- 
tary invasion or of economic competition. Hence, on the one 
hand the United States has fortified the Canal and will un- 
doubtedly take all other measures necessary to protect it 
against military attack. Hence, on the other hand the 
United States has initiated measures looking to the preemp- 
tion of all other routes practicable for a rival canal. 

It sufficiently appears from these premises that the Latin- 
American policy of the United States now has the following 
objects : 

First. To secure every American state against loss of 
independence or territory at the hands of a European Power, 
as means to which end the United States will resist aggres- 
sion by such Power by force of arms, if necessary, while, in 



420 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

the case of the weak and backward states, removing any ex- 
cuse for such aggression by itself seeing to the performance 
of their international duties ; 

Second. To secure its interest in the Panama Canal by 
whatever military measures may be appropriate or neces- 
sary; and 

Third. To protect its interest in the Panama Canal and 
Zone by whatever measures may be appropriate and neces- 
sary to prevent unjust and ruinous competition. 

These being the general objects aimed at by our present 
Latin-American policy, what is the best and most obvious 
course for the United States to pursue in order to insure 
their accomplishment? The efforts of the present Adminis- 
tration for the pacification of Mexico distinctly point the 
way to the course to be pursued. The striking feature of 
those efforts is the cooperation between the United States 
and South American states. That the cooperation has been 
highly beneficial to all interests concerned is unquestionable, 
and, should normal conditions in Mexico follow, as now seems 
probable, it must be largely credited with the result. Never- 
theless, and however more or less valuable such cooperation 
in this particular instance, its chief value lies in its tendency 
to introduce into our Latin-American policy a new and im- 
portant factor, which in all respects — ethical, political, and 
practical — should operate decidedly to the advantage of 
the United States and all American states. 

Our Latin-American policy as represented by the Monroe 
Doctrine has always been woefully weak at one vital spot. 
The United States, the originator of it so far as America is 
concerned, failed to receive any substantial support for it 
from Great Britain except for a comparatively short period. 
Ever since, the United States has been the sole asserter and 
sponsor of the Doctrine. The other American states have 
been content to enjoy its advantages while in no way assum- 
ing any share of its burdens. Realizing that the United 
States assumes those burdens not from benevolence but from 



OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY 421 

considerations of self-interest, they have no special reason 
for gratitude, and as a rule exhibit none. On the contrary, 
the more they have gained in wealth and general importance, 
the more their pride seems to take offense at a doctrine 
which, in a degree at least, makes them stand to the United 
States in the relation of wards to a guardian. Further, the 
proceedings by which the United States has felt constrained 
to compel some of the smaller and less advanced American 
states to perform their international duties have unquestion- 
ably excited uneasiness in all. They feel those proceedings, 
however temporary or however beneficent in purpose and 
result, to be distinctly menacing and to indicate purposes 
and ambitions on our part quite inconsistent with their dig- 
nity and safety as independent states. This feeling has been 
greatly intensified by the lawless violence which robbed 
Colombia of its territory for the purpose of the Panama 
Canal enterprise. It thus comes about that, in its relations 
to Latin America and Europe respectively, the United States 
now figures as a self-appointed guardian of the independence 
of the one and the self-appointed guarantor of the rights of 
the other — both the guardianship and the guaranty being 
submitted to rather than desired, and neither gaining for the 
United States any special consideration or reward — while 
our glaring invasion of Colombia's sovereignty makes us 
" suspect" in the eyes of all Latin America. A futile at- 
tempt to remove or lessen the suspicion led to the ex-Presi- 
dent's suggested qualification of the Monroe Doctrine already 
noted. This situation is obviously anomalous and unnatural 
and cannot be expected to last. The best practical solu- 
tion of its difficulties as already intimated would seem to 
be indicated by the course of the present Administration 
in its handling of the Mexican situation. For the role of sole 
dictator of affairs on the American continent as now under- 
taken by the United States, there should be substituted co- 
operation between the United States and the other principal 
American states for the promotion and protection of their 



422 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

common American interests. In short, what is to be desired 
in place of the present unsatisfactory status is a Concert of 
American states, with powers, objects, and means of accom- 
plishing them defined with all practicable precision. The 
detailed provisions of any plan for such Concert it is un- 
necessary now to consider. But certain of the great objects to 
be attained have already been indicated. The Concert would 
put all American states behind the Monroe Doctrine, so en- 
larged as to mean the protection of every American state not 
only against European aggression but against foreign ag- 
gression from whatever quarter. The discretion of the Concert 
would decide when in the common interest it was necessary 
and proper to so far invade the independence of any par- 
ticular state as to compel it to recognize and perform its 
international duties, and would also determine by what state 
or states the decision of the Concert should be enforced. 
And, the United States having become an important South 
American as well as North American Power by virtue of its 
construction and ownership of the Panama Canal — a purely 
American enterprise world-wide in its significance and con- 
sequences, and which the United States proposes to carry on 
not merely for its own account, but as trustee for all nations 
and peoples — the Concert would unquestionably make 
appropriate and adequate provision for its security and 
defense against all dangers, whether military or economic. 

The advantages of the Concert for the accomplishment 
of these several ends are apparent. In place of being a self- 
constituted agency, the Concert would hold credentials from 
a practically "United America" as represented by the states 
the most populous, the most powerful in material resources 
and military strength, and the most advanced in all the 
constituents of modern civilization. It would wield an au- 
thority well-nigh irresistible, not merely because of its su- 
periority in physical forces, but because the diverse interests, 
policies, and rivalries of the many states concurring in a 
result would be a practical guaranty that the end in view 



OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY 423 

was the general interest of the whole Concert, and not the 
special interest of any particular state. It would follow that 
as a rule, and except in extraordinary cases, a mandate of the 
Concert might be expected to be self-executing and not de- 
pendent upon the use of physical force for its effectiveness. 

Still another important advantage of such an American 
Congress remains to be stated. The Monroe Doctrine is with- 
out recognition in international law. It exists as a policy of 
the United States, firmly settled at this moment, but subject 
to change at pleasure. But an established Concert of Ameri- 
can states on the lines and for the purposes already outlined 
might well challenge recognition as coming within the pur- 
view and entitled to the sanction of international law. A 
Federation of the World — a Parliament of Man — may be a 
dream. But if it ever becomes a reality, it will be by a pro- 
cess of gradual approach and as the result of a merger in a 
world-wide unification of many groups of nations which, 
through geographical proximity, racial affinities, common in- 
stitutions and modes of thought, have been led to form them- 
selves into local federations for the attainment of certain 
common ends. In the last analysis, the true basis of inter- 
national law is the usages and practices of the great civilized 
states of the world. As those usages and practices neces- 
sarily change with the advent of new conditions, inter- 
national law, which is a progressive science, also changes in 
order to meet the new conditions. It cannot be doubted, for 
example, that the conception of the absolute equality of states 
and the unconditional independence of each is now displaced 
by the conception that every state is perforce a member of 
an International Society of States and by virtue of that rela- 
tion both acquires rights and assumes obligations. The 
whole International Society is in theory at least the common 
superior by which the rights and obligations of each member 
should be determined and enforced. In point of fact, of 
course, and while the logical status is perfect, there has been 
no world-wide organization of civilized states and no action 



424 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

by them as a whole. On the other hand, international con- 
troversies often arise which are local and limited in their 
nature and in which only a group of states has a substantial 
interest. 

In such cases, long-established international practice 
seems to justify the conclusion that the particular group 
concerned may legitimately settle such controversies even 
if the settlement involves overriding the resistance of a 
particular state. The principle applied in every such case 
is of course the general welfare — the greater good of the 
greater number — the common interests of all the members of 
the group rather than the special interests of one or a few 
members. The many instances in which groups of European 
states have thus settled controversies between their mem- 
bers, always on the plea of acting for the good of the whole 
group, are too well known to need citation. That their de- 
cisions have often been criticized and sometimes with only 
too much justice may be admitted. Yet on the whole the 
operation of the various European concerts has been con- 
sidered to be beneficent especially in their tendency to pre- 
vent wars between the members of a group. For that reason 
and on the grounds already stated, and because there can be 
no useful and effective cooperation between states for com- 
mon objects unless each can be made to subordinate its 
special interest to the general interest, international law 
must be regarded as acquiescing in the authority of a group 
of states to control the actions of its members whenever 
there is a real exigency calling for such control and pro- 
vided always that the authority is exercised in good faith, 
by the use of reasonable and appropriate means and with 
all practicable regard to the rights, interests, sentiments, and 
traditions of the several peoples concerned. Tried by such a 
test, an American Concert established for the objects and 
with the purposes already stated, and providing for their ac- 
complishment through strictly necessary and appropriate 
agencies, might confidently contend that principle as well as 



OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY 425 

the usages and practices of civilized nations amply justify 
its existence and purposes. Obviously no rule of interna- 
tional law can be violated by an American Concert under- 
taking to protect every American state against European or 
other foreign aggression. So it is difficult to contend that 
such a Concert's intervention in the affairs of an American 
state with no other aim and no other result than to bring 
about the performance of international duties is not calcu- 
lated to strengthen the ascendancy of international law 
rather than to weaken it. And it is yet more difficult to be- 
lieve that an American Concert for the maintenance and 
security of the Panama Canal should not be recognized as a 
fit subject for the protection of international law — on the 
contrary, as a neutralized canal inuring to the benefit of 
humanity at large, the Panama Canal might well be held as 
matter of international law to be under the guardianship of 
each and all of the civilized states of the world. Modern 
writers on international law concur in the principle which 
is thus stated by one of them — " Canals which connect great 
bodies of water and are international in character, modify 
the course of the commerce of the world, and their status is 
therefore a matter of international concern." 

If opinions may differ as to the merit of any or all of the 
foregoing suggestions, there surely can be no difference 
as to the necessity of determining with the least delay prac- 
ticable what our future Latin-American policy is to be. 
" Preparedness" for defensive war is demanded by the coun- 
try notwithstanding the immense burdens it entails. It 
involves many besides strictly military problems, and among 
them one of the most serious is for what contingencies we 
are to prepare and for what causes we are to be ready to 
fight. Shall we preserve unchanged our traditional atti- 
tude as the champion of every American state against for- 
eign aggression without regard to its consent or request or 
its preference to take care of itself or to seek some other 
ally than the United States, and without regard to the surely 



426 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY - 

incurred hostility of the aggressive foreign Power? It has 
often been claimed and sometimes effectively asserted that 
the United States in its own interest and for its own welfare 
must firmly resist any surrender of independence or cession 
of territory by an American state to a foreign Power even 
if the same be entirely voluntary. Suppose, for example, 
that an American state undertakes to permit an oversea 
Power to plant a colony on its soil, or to convey to it a port 
or a coaling station, is the United States to resort to war, if 
necessary, in order to defeat the scheme? These are only 
some of the inquiries which go to show the necessity of a 
speedy and comprehensive revision of our Latin-American 
policy. The replies to them involve possibilities which must 
be taken into account in any intelligent estimate of the kind 
and measure of military "preparedness" the United States 
ought to initiate. Obviously our " preparedness " means 
one thing with the cooperation of Latin America secured 
through the American Concert suggested, and a wholly dif- 
ferent and much more difficult and burdensome thing with- 
out such cooperation. The difficulties of arranging such a 
cooperation are not to be underrated. Yet the exigencies of 
the situation are apparent and threaten not merely the 
United States but all American states. It is matter of self- 
preservation for each — and each should realize the vital 
interest it has in supporting a Concert which is formed on 
fines broad enough to cover all measures essential to the 
security of all, which is wholly defensive in nature, and 
which carefully abstains from any unnecessary impairment 
of the sovereignty of each. 



THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL IN INTERNATIONAL 
RELATIONSHIPS x 

Bainbridge Colby 

[Bainbridge Colby (1869- ) was educated at Williams College and 
practices law in New York City. He was one of the founders of the Pro- 
gressive Party in 191 2, and is now a member of the United States Ship- 
ping Board. The following is an address delivered in May, 191 7, before 
the National Conference on the Foreign Relations of the United States. 
It is valuable for its emphasis on the importance of economic factors in 
international affairs, especially as illustrated by the policy of the "open 
door."] 

The supreme concern of mankind is justice. This is the 
aspiration of democracy, not only in its internal but in its 
international relations. Justice not only demanded for our- 
selves but freely accorded to others. 

This is the keynote of President Wilson's epoch-making ap- 
peal to the nations of the world. This immortal address con- 
stitutes not only a satisfactory declaration of the principles for 
which we entered the Great War, but it is the latest and most 
authentic expression of the spirit of democracy. The in- 
violability of treaties, respect for nationality, the right of de- 
velopment along self-evolved and national lines, obedience to 
the promptings of humanity, in other words, international 
justice — ■ these are the salients of his definition of democracy's 
aims and of the democratic ideal in international relations. 

But nations are animated not only by theories but by con- 
ditions. And it is well for us to remember that a nobly defined 
ideal does not necessarily meet or vanquish a robust and per- 
sistent condition. The issue of the Great War is familiarly 

1 From Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, July, 19 17. Re- 
printed by permission. 

427 



428 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

defined as between autocracy or militarism on the one hand, 
and democracy on the other. But militarism or even autoc- 
racy, odious as they are, are only different lines of approach 
to, or treatment of, underlying conditions in the world. 

I think it may fairly be said that the ailment which afflicts 
the world is economic and not exclusively political. The 
trouble with the highly industrialized nations of the temper- 
ate zone is that they cannot produce what they need to con- 
sume, and they cannot consume what they need to produce. 
The populations of the industrial nations are steadily growing. 
The nations of western Europe in a century have doubled 
their population. Germany is adding a million per annum to 
her population, and the United States even more. The nations 
of western Europe cannot produce the means required for their 
subsistence. They have not the agricultural basis which yields 
them their requirements in food and raw materials. These in- 
dispensables of national life must be obtained beyond their 
borders. They must, in other words, be purchased, and the 
means necessary to the purchase are manufactured products, 
which must greatly exceed in amount what the domestic mar- 
ket of the producing nation can absorb. From this universal 
need of nations, i.e. food and raw materials on the one hand, 
and a market for products on the other, arises the value of 
colonial possessions, particularly in the unexploited and highly 
productive regions in the tropics and the Orient. 

These regions are in large part peopled by nations whose 
titles to the lands they hold are unassailable, yet the people 
are lacking either in industry or ambition, and the productive 
possibilities of their lands are incapable of realization unless 
the popular energies are marshaled and directed and even 
supplemented by the more progressive and colonizing nations. 
The world needs their produce, the life of Europe demands 
their raw materials, and mere rights of nations can with diffi- 
culty make a stand against necessities that are so imperious. 
There has thus arisen an economic imperialism, of which, 
strange to say, the most democratic of nations are the most 



IDEAL IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS 429 

conspicuous examples. England throughout the world, France 
in Africa and the East, are deeply conscious of the relation 
to their industrial vigor of colonial expansion. 

Economic advantage seems to follow in the wake of politi- 
cal control. It is the mother country which builds the rail- 
roads in the colonies, controls port privileges, fixes tariffs, 
and secures to her nationals the out-distancing advantages 
which make alien competition impossible. Theoretically this 
may not be true, but in practice it is uniformly true. Of 
Algeria's exportations seventy-nine per cent are to France, 
and eighty-five per cent of her imports come from France. 

As the industrial nation grows in population, the pressure 
upon her means of sustenance increases, her need of raw ma- 
terials grows greater, and she turns a ranging eye throughout 
the world for the means of satisfying this internal pressure. 

Here is the motive of wars, here is the menace to world 
peace. And it is with reference to this condition, prevalent 
throughout the world, that we must determine the attitude 
of democracy in its international relations. 

This economic pressure is but beginning to be felt in the 
United States, but its premonitory symptoms are already seen. 
It is only a question of time when our complacent sense of 
security will give way to a realization that our vast agricultural 
basis is not vast enough to sustain our even vaster industrial 
development. We shall then feel, if not so acutely as sister 
nations in the east, at least as truly, the need of expanding 
markets and enlarged sources of raw materials, if not of food. 

The spiritual aims of democracy, so perfectly defined by 
the President, will have to encounter the imperious economic 
necessities which drive all nations, which cannot be stayed, and 
which refuse to be silenced. The freedom of the seas, respect 
for international boundaries, observance of treaties, obedience 
to international law, recognition of the dictates of humanity 
— in short, all the aims which animate America and her allies 
in this great war, do not in and of themselves contain the 
promise of a complete tranquilization of the world. To end 



430 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

wars requires that the sources of international friction should 
be reached. The repression of barbarism, the punishment of 
ruthlessness, constitute a sufficient but only an immediate ob- 
jective of the world's struggle. It is, of course, the primary 
undertaking of civilization, and once achieved, our thought 
and our effort must go forward in aims that are more far 
reaching. Our goal must be the destruction of the economic 
root of war — in other words, to establish an economic, not 
only a political, internationalism, a community of interests, 
even if qualified and incomplete, among great nations. The 
American policy of the open door in colonial administration 
must find acceptance in the world if mankind is to emerge 
from the perennial menace of war. 



TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES 1 

Charles H. Brent 

[Charles H. Brent (1862- ) was born in Canada and educated at 
Trinity College, Toronto. From 1901 to 191 7 he was the bishop of the 
Episcopal Church for the Philippine Islands and was closely identified 
with the progress made by the Filipinos after the American occupation. 
In 191 1 he was president of the International Opium Conference at the 
Hague. Since the entrance of the United States into the World War he 
has been appointed a major in the United States Army and put in charge 
of all Protestant Chaplains of the American Army in France. This candid 
article is especially valuable for its clear exposition of the application of 
American democratic ideas to our dependencies.] 

In the course of a recent discussion of the Philippine prob- 
lem, I was asked by one of our most eminent educators of 
the senior generation, whether any instance in history could 
be cited where one nation had successfully tutored another 
in self-government. My answer took the form of a counter- 
question — Can an instance be adduced where the full experi- 
ment has been tried, except so far as our own nation has done 
so during the last two decades? No reply was made. 

By tutoring in self-government was understood the effort 
of a country to develop to the uttermost the latent capacity 
of a backward dependency, with a view to bringing it to 
nationhood and launching it with all the responsibilities and 
prerogatives of a new unit of government in the world of 
men. I believe that this can be successfully done and that the 
result of our labors in the Philippines testifies to the fact. 

Great Britain, whatever her deficiencies, has been the most 
just friend of weak and backward people that history has 
known. The part she has played in their development and 

1 From Yale Review, July, 191 7. Reprinted by permission. 
43i 



432 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

protection has been replete with noble elements, especially 
during the last half-century. She has consistently put her 
dependencies and colonies to school, carrying them from the 
kindergarten to the higher grades, but she has always stopped 
short of graduating them into independent statehood. In 
every instance, her frankly declared objective has been not 
their independence but their continued and, in a sense, in- 
creased dependence. Her whole viewpoint has been imperial : 
her first concern has been the well-being of the empire, and 
her second, the individual aspirations and desires of the 
dependency. Of course, her statesmen would claim that 
what was good for the empire was good for the dependencies, 
and that it was more profitable all the way round to develop 
a strong dependency within the empire than a weak nation out- 
side of it. That, however, is not to the point. Even if it be 
true that the British Empire came into existence through a 
fit of absent-mindedness, it represents, with its famous pax 
Britanmca and its network of colonies all over the world, 
one of the noble monuments of history, quite capable of 
justifying its principles and its main methods. But the 
question at stake is not whether Great Britain is a structure 
of magnificent proportions and beneficent influence. It is 
whether she or any other European power has ever set as the 
goal of a dependency ultimate self-government and used all 
her wisdom and resources to compass that end. I am aware 
of no such instance. 

The outstanding example of the British government's 
educational and philanthropic ventures among alien peoples 
is its administration, for more than a quarter of a century, 
of Egyptian affairs. It was doubtless for Egypt's sake that 
the country was occupied, but it was still more for the benefit 
of the empire. An effete and bankrupt nation, under Great 
Britain's firm discipline and beneficent schooling, renewed 
its youth and credit in a remarkably short period. But the 
moment Egyptian nationalism reared its head, it was, to use 
mild language, discouraged. That is to say, the educational 



TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES 433 

terminus ad quern came short of the ideal of independence, and 
the child was kept in the schoolroom. The late Lord Cromer, 
Egypt's greatest friend and servant, a man whom history 
cannot fail to place high on the roll of statesmen and ad- 
ministrators, was of the opinion that there was lack of capacity 
among the Egyptians to come up to the requirements of a 
modern independent state. In 1905 in reply to my categorical 
question — Will Egypt ever be able to govern herself ? — he 
gave an unqualified negative. Recently Great Britain has 
found it necessary to denude Egypt of even the semblance of 
independence. 



In the case of Cuba, America's occupation was too brief 
to be immediately effective. Nevertheless, however short it 
was, it represented a period of administrative education 
without which Cuba could not have so soon become a tolerable 
neighbor. Between the moment when the American flag 
went up on Morro Castle, and the Cuban flag took its place, 
a period of four years, America was tutoring Cuba in self- 
government. Popular education was begun, departments 
of government planned, and standards of political integrity 
set. Cuba, because of her history, her proximity to the 
American continent, her comparative freedom from hetero- 
geneous elements of population, her territorial compactness, 
was at once put into an advanced class and given her degree 
of independent statehood early. A short post-graduate course 
was administered later. Now the new republic seems to have 
settled down to sober business and bears perpetual witness to 
America's purpose to promote the interests of small or weak 
nations and her aptitude as a teacher in self-government. 
Her case stands alone in history. 

The Philippines presented a vastly different proposition. 
Situated ten thousand miles away ; composed of the broken 
territory of an archipelago; with a diversified population 
widely scattered excepting in an occasional congested district 



434 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

such as Cebu; with no common language, save among a 
small percentage where there is a babel of dialects ; devoid 
of a native literature; disturbed by internal troubles; with 
a stubborn fragment of the people wild and unorganized, and 
a Mohammedan tertium quid traditionally hostile to the 
Christian population, — with all this to face, the problem 
presented by the pupil to the teacher was baffling. 

Even before the process of restoring public order was well 
under way, the symbol of democracy, the schoolhouse, made 
its appearance. In 1901, the year in which civil govern- 
ment was established, a veritable army of American school- 
teachers was drafted into the Philippine service. The training 
of Filipino teachers was begun at the earliest possible moment. 
In 1 913, there were in the Department of Public Instruction 
some 9500 teachers, of whom 658 were American, the balance, 
of course, being Filipino. This is noteworthy, for it indicates 
that the purpose of the United States was sincere. There can 
be no successful experiment in democracy where free educa- 
tion for all does not prevail. And the converse is true — 
where there is a strong public school system, democracy will 
surely take root. The progress of education marks the progress 
of democratic ideals and principles, that is to say, of self- 
government. There never yet was a republic in more than 
name that had not an instructed commonalty, either in 
Central or in South America. And where the franchise out- 
runs the intelligence of the voters, you have bureaucracy 
among officeholders, manipulation of voters by corrupt and 
self-seeking politicians, and a debased governmental system 
from top to bottom. You cannot teach men how to vote 
merely by extending the franchise, as we know to our sorrow in 
our own country without looking further. It is not merely that 
efficient public schools promote literacy, valuable as the func- 
tion is. The Philippine public school is the direct application 
of democracy to the life of the child. "Definite training for 
citizenship, " says the Report of the Philippine Commission 
for 1914, "is given in the primary, intermediate, and secondary 



TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES 435 

courses. Various literary societies afford pupils practice in 
conducting meetings at which questions of interest to all 
citizens are discussed." 

Admitting shortcomings in the Philippine Department of 
Public Instruction, which was organized in 1901, it repre- 
sents the high- water mark of popular education in an Oriental 
dependency. To quote again from the Commission's Report : 

The intellectual awakening of the Philippines which followed 
the American occupation and the establishment of a modern school 
system is one of the most gratifying results of American control 
in the Islands. Everywhere there is the keenest desire for educa- 
tion. ... It is because of this intellectual awakening and desire 
for growth and development that the American teachers have an 
opportunity of doing so important a work in introducing Western 
methods and ideals, and in keeping the schools in close touch with 
Western culture. Through the introduction of English, the people 
of the Philippine Islands have had access to a literature un- 
dreamed of by them, and, not only in the schools, but in the 
public libraries, works of history, travel, biography, and science 
are greatly sought, not only by the coming generation, but by 
many of the older generation who learned English because they 
found that their horizon was immeasurably widened through the 
reading of English prose and verse. 

I attach supreme importance to the place of public educa- 
tion and the preservation of its standards in our school of 
Philippine self-government. Education outranks all else 
although its fruits ripen slowly. It is the mightiest engine 
of democracy ; and where it is weak, citizenship is weak. In 
the case of Mexico, no group of men have more nearly analyzed 
her need, or intimated the solution of her problem, than the 
group of college professors who have been giving careful con- 
sideration to her educational poverty and how to remedy it. 

In the Philippines, the great mass of the adult population 
is illiterate, and their horizon is more circumscribed than can 
be easily realized by those personally unfamiliar with the 
country at large. Though the terms for qualifying as a voter 



436 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

were from the first set at the bottom notch, only some 200,000 
'out of a population of approximately 9,000,000 have up to 
this time claimed the franchise. Voters are now those com- 
prised within one of the following classes: men who under 
existing law are legal voters and have exercised the right of 
suffrage ; men who own real property to the value of five 
hundred pesos, or who annually pay thirty pesos or more of 
the established taxes; men who are able to read and write 
Spanish, English, or a native language. It was the Jones Bill 
which added the ability to read and write a native language 
as an alternative. The provision is theoretically just. Un- 
fortunately, however, it is premature, as it will not only 
increase the present number of poorly informed voters but 
also tend to check the bilingual movement which is going 
to be so valuable an asset in the unifying of the Archipelago 
and in the international relations of the Philippines of the. 
future. It would be the part of wisdom, even at the cost of 
hurting the feelings of the adult generation of the day, to 
restrict the electorate until the present school children shall 
have reached their majority. In advocating this, I am only 
applying to the Philippines a principle which I should like to 
see operative in the United States, where the emphasis is rather 
on the extension of democratic. privilege than on the exactions 
of democratic responsibility and the preservation of its purity. 
Next in importance to the Philippine Department of Public 
Instruction, I would place the cooperative method of actual 
government which has characterized our procedure in the 
Philippines. With a consistency that has been more rapid 
than opportune, we have " moved from a government of 
Americans aided by Filipinos to a government of Filipinos 
aided by Americans." From the beginning, an honest effort 
was made to fill every possible office with Filipinos as they 
manifested ability. A minority of the first Commission were 
Filipinos ; likewise the chief justice, an increasing number of 
the associate justices, and so on through every department 
and bureau of government to the personnel of the most obscure 



TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES 437 

municipality. There can be no possible objection to this course 
provided the appointees are chosen with strict regard for 
fitness and training, which has not always been the case. 
Men have been taught to govern by being given a share in 
government. The response through a decade has been emi- 
nently satisfactory, and a carefully organized civil service, 
controlling both Americans and Filipinos, has promoted a 
purity of motive and an efficiency of service that is admirable. 
Every step in the direction of Filipinization — this awkward 
but expressive word is current coin — has been logical. 
Government by commission gave place in the course of time 
to government by commission and popular assembly. A 
majority of American commissioners gave place to a majority 
of Filipino commissioners, and in provincial administration 
similar changes were made. Now within a few months, gov- 
ernment by commission and popular assembly has been 
superseded by government by a legislature of two chambers — 
a Senate and a House of Representatives. 

The Jones Bill, after three years of consideration, emerged 
as a tolerably creditable product. Its defects, in my judgment, 
are three. The preamble is marred by the insincerity of 
intentional ambiguity — it is "the deliberate purpose of the 
people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty 
over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their independ- 
ence as soon as stable government can be established therein" 
The room for controversy over the italicized section of this 
clause is so patent as to call for no comment. In the second 
place, it is dangerous and provocative of conflict for the 
young Senate to be immediately clothed with authority to 
checkmate at will the chief executive in his appointments. 
Lastly, an increase of the electorate at this stage is unwise 
in the light of our experience in America. 

It was to the credit of the House of Representatives in 
Washington that they negatived in emphatic manner the 
Clarke Amendment to the Jones Bill, which provided for 
complete Philippine independence in not more than four 



438 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

years. It was unintelligent in conception, cowardly in motive, 
and unjust to the Philippines in substance. Loyalty, not 
opposition, to the true principles of Philippine freedom prompts 
this criticism. I write as one who, without prospect or thought 
of reward, has given the best years of his life to the Philippine 
cause in its more difficult and obscure phases. Democracy I 
hold to be a sacred trust. It is governed, as history clearly 
shows, by inflexible laws. Opportunism which scouts these 
laws may bring momentary satisfaction, but later on retribu- 
tion will inflict its scorpion sting. Other governmental systems 
may flourish without regard to the condition of each individual 
citizen. Democracy, never. Democracy is as dependent for its 
purity and effectiveness, its wisdom and integrity, upon the 
purity and effectiveness, the wisdom and integrity of each 
citizen small or great, as the babe is upon its mother's milk. 
In the Philippines, America is for the moment the steward of 
democracy in a university of government of her own creation. 
She must exercise her stewardship with due regard for the 
nature of the treasure she is dispensing, as well as with con- 
sideration for the desires and aspirations of the people she is 
educating. 

Mention should be made of the thorough training that is 
being given our wards in scientific research through the 
agency of the Bureau of Science, which is by long odds the 
most efficient institution of the sort in the Orient. They are 
also being trained in the treatment of criminals under the 
Bureau of Prisons, which, in the Gwahig Penal Colony where 
there is neither weapon, bolt, nor bar, and in San Rameon 
Farm among the Moros, has in operation among one thousand 
five hundred prisoners the most advanced and humane prin- 
ciples of penology. The Filipinos are being educated in road 
building, in the development of irrigation and artesian water, 
in architecture and construction, by the Bureau of Public 
Works ; in matters pertaining to exports and imports, to the 
preservation of public order, to hygiene and sanitation, by 
their respective Bureaus ; and, last but not least, in religious 



TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES 439 

magnanimity, which I believe to be greater than in any other 
Latin-trained country, by the separation of church and state. 
I mention the foregoing not as exhaustive but as illustrative. 
Moreover, the instruction has all been given in our university 
of self-government without drawing upon the Treasury of the 
United States. Apart from the twenty million dollars agreed l 
upon as a douceur to Spain by the Treaty of Paris, and the 
added expense connected with maintaining the army and 
navy in the Philippines, the affairs of our insular dependency 
have been so honestly and economically handled that the 
receipts of government meet all liabilities. The men who laid 
the foundations of this undertaking and bore the burden and 
heat of the day builded a fabric too strong and too deep to 
be easily shaken. All who come after will be able to do them- 
selves and their task credit only in so far as they give honor 
to whom honor is due. 

The future of the Philippines is difficult to forecast. It 
will depend in large part upon the way America executes 
the balance of her trust. But I would say in conclusion that 
this seems tolerably clear : the young or small or weak nation 
of to-morrow is going to have a harder time and a grander 
opportunity than ever before. It is true that nations like 
India and Egypt did govern themselves or, to speak more 
accurately, had independent statehood — the two expressions 
are not synonymous — in ancient days. But that was at a 
period when the ends of the earth did not rub shoulders. 
Such government as they had would not be tolerated in our 
modern world any more than an absolute monarchy would 
be tolerated in America. If internationalism and the fed- 
eration of the world are anything more than empty verbiage, 
they imply that every nation is responsible for the purity 
and effectiveness of its government not only to itself but also 
to the whole family of nations, just as truly as the States 
of the Union are responsible to the federal center which 
symbolizes and cements the whole. Even we have not hesi- 
tated to call to account Spain and Santo Domingo and Haiti 



44o AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

and, forbearingly and ineffectively, Mexico, for financial 
incompetence or inability to preserve order. The small state 
of the future, if it has any self-respect, will not even desire 
to crawl behind the pseudo-protection of the discredited 
principle of neutralization. Every nation, great and small, 
will desire and be compelled to stand on its own merits and 
character, manfully shouldering its responsibility. It is not 
merely that neutralization fails to protect from attack from 
the outside. If a nation were really to trust in its guaranteed 
inviolability as, happily, Belgium did not, as Holland and 
Switzerland do not, neutrality would prevent growth from 
within, for it would emasculate and sterilize its victim. A 
nation cannot be a nation in more than name if it declines 
to accept full international responsibility. 

Democracy to grow healthily must grow slowly; and, as 
I view it, it will be to the mutual advantage of both America 
and the Philippines to walk yet awhile in close organic rela- 
tion. America has had no more sobering or enlightening ex- 
perience than her direct responsibility for the well-being of a 
people like the Filipinos. It goes without saying that when 
once America's governmental authority in the Philippines 
has reached the vanishing point, the flag that has guaranteed 
and presided over an unprecedented period of peace, pros- 
perity, and progress, will go down forever, leaving the Islands 
to their own self-protection as well as their own self-govern- 
ment. But I still cling to the hope that our school, so ably 
and hopefully established by American men and patriots, will 
not close its doors until the Philippines shall have honorably 
graduated into a liberty that will be as secure as it will be 
to the liking of its citizens and to the credit of democracy. 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 1 
J. O. P. Bland 

[J. O. P. Bland (1863- ) is an English journalist and author who 
has spent most of his life in the Far East. He has been connected with 
the Chinese Customs Service, been the London Times correspondent at 
Shanghai, and was in Peking from 1907-1910. He has also traveled ex- 
tensively in Japan since 1887, and during the Russo-Japanese War of 
1 904-1 905 he assisted the Japanese secret service in China. His wife is 
an American. The present article, from which some paragraphs of tem- 
porary interest have been omitted, furnishes an interpretation of Jap- 
anese aims in the Far East, which, while not entirely unchallenged, is 
helpful in forming American opinion on this vexing question.] 

At the conclusion of the present struggle, the exhaustion of 
European nations must leave the United States and Japan 
relatively much stronger and richer than they were. Both 
powers will be deeply and directly interested in the arrange- 
ment of the conditions under which peace is eventually re- 
stored. Japan, as an ally of the Quadruple Entente, and 
America, possibly as a mediator, must have a voice in the 
international conference which will define the future frontiers 
of Europe and many subsidiary questions. Among these, the 
rights and interests of the powers in China, and the future of 
that country as an independent state, present problems which, 
unless carefully studied in advance, may well create great 
difficulties and even new casus belli for the powers whose 
territories border on the Pacific Ocean. The shadow of the 
Far-Eastern question has frequently been darkly cast between 
the United States and Japan in recent years, and never more 
ominously than when the renewal of the Anglo- Japanese 
Alliance (191 1) relieved England of the duty of assisting 

1 From Century Magazine, January, 19 16. Reprinted by permission. 

441 



442 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

Japan against any nation with which Great Britain might 
have concluded a treaty of arbitration. But much of the 
trouble has been due to ignorance : a closer study of the ques- 
tion should serve to reassure public opinion in the United 
States and to put an end to the suspicious uneasiness which 
rinds expression in the unbalanced writings of a Homer Lea 
or the diplomatic vagaries of a Philander Knox. 

Japanese statecraft, whether displayed in Manchuria, in 
Magdalena Bay, or in the Marshall Islands, points to a per- 
fectly consistent and legitimate policy, which has only to be 
rightly appreciated in order to remove all immediate prospect 
of serious friction between Nippon and Anglo-Saxon peoples. 
The Japanese, who would not hesitate for a moment to ex- 
clude from their country Chinese or other cheap labor, are 
fully alive to the economic necessity which has compelled 
America, Canada, and Australia to frame their Asiatic ex- 
clusion acts. Beyond all question they recognize the legiti- 
mate protective purpose of these acts; what they object to, 
and very properly, is the implied assumption of the racial 
and moral superiority of the white races. They are well 
aware that the objection to Chinese laborers in the Pacific 
States and to Japanese children in the Californian schools is 
just as directly due to economic causes as the anti-Semitic 
movement in Russia. They know that the Asiatic is excluded 
not because he would contaminate, but simply because he 
would devour, the white man in open-labor competition. 
England, which professes to believe in free trade and unre- 
stricted immigration, can hardly meet the Japanese on this 
question in the spirit of " frank and full consultation" for 
which the text of the alliance provides. Frankness must 
stultify either the British Government or the acts of the 
dominions . overseas. Similarly, with its Monroe Doctrine 
for America and its open door for Asia, with its professed 
belief in the right of every human being freely to change his 
nationality and domicile, the United States is not in a posi- 
tion to discuss the exclusion acts with Japanese statesmen 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 443 

on its accustomed lofty ground of political morality. The 
Anglo-Saxon's ultimate argument, conceal it as we may, lies 
in the stern law of self-preservation, backed by force. 

Now, if there is one fact which stands out more prominently 
than any other in the history of the last ten years, — that is, 
since the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth, — it is 
that Japanese statesmen are prepared to recognize and accept 
these self-protective activities of the Anglo-Saxon races, pro- 
vided only that Japan also is allowed to follow her own na- 
tional instincts of self-preservation on the lines of geographical 
gravitation dictated by her economic necessities; that is to 
say, by expansion into China's thinly peopled dependencies 
of Manchuria and Mongolia. Even a cursory study of the 
recent history of the Far East points clearly to this conclusion. 
Japan is not prepared to accept the Monroe Doctrine and 
the Asiatic exclusion acts and at the same time to acquiesce 
in the traditional policy of the commercial powers, which 
insists on maintenance of the status quo in China. 

It is true that by the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty and 
other conventions Japan pledged herself to abstain from any 
encroachments on the territorial integrity and sovereignty 
of China; but her diplomacy, trained in the best European 
traditions, is unsurpassed in the gentle art of treaty-making 
and treaty-breaking. It has learned to a nicety the time and 
place for " extra- textual interpretations" and the conclusive 
value of the fait accompli. As far as China is concerned, the 
protective clauses of the Portsmouth Treaty, greeted with 
intense satisfaction in America, were never likely to be effec- 
tive in Manchuria even had Russia and Japan remained on 
guard against each other in their respective spheres. Those 
who hoped and believed that China, in accordance with that 
treaty, would be allowed to develop the resources of this 
fertile region without interference and for her own benefit 
knew little of the imperative necessity which had compelled 
Japan to fight Russia for Port Arthur. The same necessity 
led her, immediately after the conclusion of the Portsmouth 



444 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

Treaty, to come to terms with Russia for a division of the 
spoil under conditions which virtually insured the benevolent 
acquiescence of England and France. Upon the conclusion of 
this pact of spoliation, diplomatically known as an entente, 
the Portsmouth Treaty became a dead letter; it had never 
been more than a time-and-f ace-saving device. 

The results were many and important. Not only was China 
not permitted to develop her commerce in Manchuria by the 
extension of her northern railways, not only did Russia and 
Japan separately and jointly veto the construction by English 
and American capitalists of the Chinchou-Aigun trunk-line ; 
but they went much further, asserting and extending their 
special rights and interests over China's loosely held de- 
pendency of Mongolia, forbidding its colonization by Chinese 
subjects, and establishing their usual trading and mining 
monopolies. By the end of 1910, China's sovereignty through- 
out all the region north of the Great Wall was evidently 
doomed. Mr. Secretary Knox, under the direction of Amer- 
ican financiers, made spasmodic, but futile, attempts to pre- 
vent the inevitable, by his scheme for the neutralization of 
Manchurian railways, by forlorn excursions into dollar di- 
plomacy, and by earnest appeals to the open-door pledges 
of all concerned ; their only result was to draw Russia and 
Japan more closely together in the bonds of a most profitable 
pact. In 1 910, Korea, whose independence had been solemnly 
guaranteed by Japan and by all the powers, was " persuaded'' 
to sign away the remnants of her sovereignty and become an 
integral part of the Japanese Empire. The scraps of paper, 
which were consigned to oblivion by the European and Amer- 
ican chancelleries at this passing of the Hermit Kingdom, had 
ceased to represent either actualities or vital interests. This 
being so, the forces of geographical gravitation met with no 
resistance, and the disappearance of an economically un- 
profitable nation evoked only perfunctory valedictory articles 
in the press. 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 445 

In view of the probability that the Far-Eastern question, 
with many others, will eventually have to be settled at a 
post-bellum international conference, it is evidently desirable 
that public opinion in England and America should be formed 
upon accurate knowledge of the main facts of the actual 
situation. So long as the censorship continues to function as 
at present, this knowledge will not be generally available in 
England ; this makes it the more necessary that all possible 
publicity should be brought to bear on the subject in America. 
In view of the misunderstandings and mutual suspicions which 
have been created between Tokio and Washington on more 
than one occasion by the reckless sensationalism of yellow- 
press writers on the one hand and, on the other, by the Amer- 
ican public's indifference to foreign affairs, it is a matter of 
no little importance to the future of the world's peace that 
the Far-Eastern question should be carefully studied and 
widely discussed by leading publicists in the United States. 
The creation of an enlightened public opinion, based on 
accurate knowledge, is essential to the conclusion of a general 
agreement between the powers interested in the future of 
China and the trade routes of the Pacific. 

In the formation and education of such a body of opinion 
certain venerable shibboleths of diplomacy and catchwords 
long current will need to be gently, but firmly, relegated to 
the limbo of creeds outworn. All the political ideas under- 
lying the open-door conventions and the international guaran- 
tees for the maintenance of China's territorial integrity must 
be frankly recognized as obsolete, for the simple reason that 
they have been abrogated by Russia and Japan with the 
tacit consent of all concerned. The resultant grouping of 
rival forces and interests at Peking, both before and after 
the Russo-Japanese War, conferred on China the protective 
benefits of a period of equilibrium; but this period came to 
an end with the definite conclusion of the Russo-Japanese 
entente. Optimistic belief in the possibility of China's effec- 
tively setting her own house in order must also be abandoned. 



446 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

It is a belief that gained many sentimental adherents in 
America as the result of Young China's so-called Republican- 
ism in 191 1, but the prospect of organizing honesty and effi- 
ciency out of any class of officialdom in China is just as remote 
to-day as it was under the Manchus. Eloquent platform 
enthusiasm for representative government, and the profession 
of high moral ideas by political adventurers and place-seekers, 
can no more make for good government in China than in 
Mexico. The men and machinery are completely lacking for 
the production of honest administration and military efficiency 
from the official corruption and ignorance of China's rulers. 
All our instincts of justice and respect for the rights of nations, 
all our sympathy for the misfortunes of the Chinese people, 
patient victims of misgovernment from time immemorial, are 
powerless to avert from them the destiny which sooner or 
later overtakes a passive, non-resisting race menaced by the 
necessities of earth-hungry neighbors in arms. 

Deeply as we may sympathize with the Chinese, we should 
not hastily criticize or condemn the expansionist policy of 
Japan. In considering the causes and possible results of that 
expansion, certain fundamental truths are often overlooked 
by writers who approach the Far-Eastern question from a 
sentimental point of view. In the first place, it must be borne 
in mind that the Japanese nation differs radically from the 
typically passive Oriental races of India and China. It is, 
in the words of John Stuart Mill, an " active, self -helping " 
people, a people inspired not only by ideals of imperialism, 
but possessed of strong martial instincts. When in India or 
China the pressure of population upon food supplies becomes 
acute, the patient toiling millions accept death with fatalistic 
resignation. By thousands and tens of thousands, almost un- 
complaining, they go to their graves as to beds, accepting 
plague, pestilence, and famine as part of the inevitable burden 
of humanity. Only in the southern maritime provinces the 
more virile inhabitants in China have endeavored to lessen 
this burden by emigration, by seeking work and wealth 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 



447 



overseas ; but individually and collectively the race is lacking 
in the " self -helping " instinct which solves such problems of 
expansion by warfare and the survival of the fittest. 

In the second place, it must be remembered that Japan's 
vital need of wider frontiers, new sources of food supply, and 
new markets for her industries has been in very great measure 
forced upon her by the policies and example of the Anglo- 
Saxon peoples. In self-defense they have learned from us the 
organization of machine labor in cities ; following our example, 
they have passed swiftly from the condition of an agricultural 
to that of an industrial nation. With these economic changes 
came the modern science of sanitation, the immediate result 
being an increase of population far greater than that which 
had taken place when the country lived by and for agriculture. 
In 1875, before industrialism had set in, the population of 
Japan's 150,000 square miles was thirty-four millions; last 
year it was fifty-four millions, and the average annual excess 
of births over deaths is roughly seven hundred thousand. 
The Elder Statesmen of Japan anticipated long ago, as all 
their unswerving policy has proved, the consequences to 
their country of the ever-increasing fierceness of industrial 
competition. They realized that, as the number of countries 
that depend for their very existence upon the exchange of 
manufactured goods for foodstuffs and raw materials in- 
creases, and as the countries with surplus food supplies be- 
come fewer and fewer, Japan must face the alternative either 
of emigration on a large scale or of finding in territorial ex- 
pansion new sources of supply and an outlet for her surplus 
population. The Anglo-Saxon peoples, by their Asiatic ex- 
clusion acts, have shut the door on emigration to those parts 
of the world where Japanese labor might have reaped a rich 
harvest. Small wonder, then, that the eyes of Japan's wise 
rulers became fixed upon Korea and the fertile, unpeopled 
regions of Manchuria and Mongolia, that the possession of 
these lands became the be-all and end-all of Japanese policy, 
the goal toward which all the hopes and energies of the nation 



448 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

have been unswervingly directed. "Eastern Asia," said Count 
Komura in the Diet three years ago, "is the only safe field for 
Japanese emigration." Like Prince Ito and other makers of 
modern Japan, Count Okuma has never had any illusions 
on this subject. If at times the Japanese have seemed to be 
desirous of testing the resistant strength of the Monroe Doc- 
trine in California and in Mexico; if they have displayed 
activity in Vancouver and Honolulu, and cast their eyes 
toward island outposts in the southern seas, these have been 
political side issues, deliberately planned and pursued in 
order to create opportunities for application of the principle 
of do ut des. 

Long before the Russian invasion had been swept back 
from the shores of the Yellow Sea, while still the Japanese 
people were working patiently and with undivided patriotism 
to master the mechanical and military sciences of the Western 
world, the whole nation knew that its destinies depended 
upon the struggle for Korea and the Manchurian hinterland. 
Eastern Asia could not become a safe field for Japanese immi- 
gration so long as Russia remained undefeated and in posses- 
sion of Port Arthur, but it was always the only possible 
field in sight. Every page of Japanese history since the Treaty 
of Shimonoseki reveals the conscious purpose of the nation's 
rulers to make that field both safe and fruitful at the earliest 
possible moment. Their policy of expansion, unlike that of 
Russia, has been from first to last dictated by recognition of 
the supreme law of self-preservation. We may deplore the 
fact that Japanese emigration to eastern Asia can be carried 
out only by inflicting grave injustice and suffering upon 
millions of defenseless Chinese. We may assume that de- 
barred from colonizing Mongolia, gradually reduced in Man- 
churia to the position of a subject race, prevented from de- 
veloping the resources of their country for their own profit 
by the vested rights and monopolies of the predominant 
power, the Chinese must find the struggle for life greatly 
intensified. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Saxon, whose whole 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 449 

history has been one of expansion in anticipation of the 
actual and future needs of the race, can assume no moral 
grounds for criticizing or condemning the policy of the Jap- 
anese. The law of self-preservation, as applied between 
nations, recognizes no scope for altruism; red men, and 
yellow and brown, being unfit to survive in the struggle for 
places in the sun, have been eliminated by the European. 
To oppose Japan's actions and intentions on grounds of self- 
interest, as by treaties and conventions has been done in 
the past, may be justifiable; but to oppose them on high 
moral grounds is hypocritical and futile. British interests in 
this Far-Eastern question are partly commercial, partly 
political ; Japan's are national and vital. 

In taking advantage of the present situation in Europe to 
exact from China concessions and privileges far greater than 
she could ever have hoped to obtain at Peking under normal 
conditions of diplomatic procedure, the Japanese Govern- 
ment has ignored certain of its obligations recorded in the 
treaty of alliance with Great Britain, but the attitude and 
official statements of the British Foreign Office for the last 
four years have been of a nature to suggest that, so long as 
existing trading rights and railway concessions are not seriously 
menaced, Japan has a free hand. As far as the special rights 
and interests claimed in Manchuria and Mongolia are con- 
cerned, this vast region was definitely recognized as coming 
under Japanese influence four years ago ; in other words, the 
open door is there closed, and the principle of equal oppor- 
tunities abandoned. As for the " contingent" demands of 
the Japanese protocol, it would be unwise to speculate too 
closely as to their real intentions. Allowance must be made 
for Count Okuma's vote-catching program at election-time, 
and the prudence of the Elder Statesmen may be relied upon 
to look carefully before they leap into an untenable position 
in central or southern China. Even though neither England, 
France, Germany, nor the United States is at present likely 
to oppose Japanese infringement of treaty rights in China 



450 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

by anything more than diplomatic protests, there are ob- 
viously many powerful obstacles, financial and political, to 
limit the ambitions and check the activities of the military 
party and the jingoes in Tokio. It is to be expected that for 
some time to come these activities will be concentrated on 
the colonizing of Manchuria and on the development of 
points d'appui in Shantung and Fu-kien. 

Assuming the Japanese to be capable of organizing and en- 
forcing good government in China, the cause of civilization 
and the welfare of the Chinese people would alike have much 
to gain from the establishment of a Japanese protectorate 
over the eighteen provinces. History proves clearly that the 
Chinese are prepared to accept alien rulers so long as they 
rule with wisdom and justice. It is certain that China's 
intelligentsia is utterly incapable of ruling wisely, and that the 
people are unfit for self-government; it is equally certain 
that no European power or group of powers could now under- 
take the stupendous work of reorganization and education 
which the country requires. Realizing this fact, millions of 
Japanese undoubtedly believe in the possibility of a great 
Asiatic empire under the flag of the rising sun, but there is 
no evidence that the sober "sense of their responsible statesmen 
entertains any such ambitions. If they did, it would remain 
to be demonstrated that the ruling class in Japan possesses 
the moral qualities and administrative genius requisite to 
secure the loyalty and good will of the Chinese people. 

To sum up, recent events at Peking mark clearly the be- 
ginning of a period in the history of the Far East in which 
Japanese predominance will be the central factor, and I have 
endeavored to show that the expansion of Japan into Man- 
churia and Mongolia, obviously preliminary to formal an- 
nexation, is the result of urgent economic necessity, the 
inevitable response to instincts of self-preservation. I have 
assumed that neither on political nor high moral grounds can 
exception rightly be taken to this expansion into the un- 
populous regions north of the Great Wall ; on the contrary, 



THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM 451 

that it should advance the cause of civilization by developing 
great sources of wealth which Chinese and Mongolian ineffi- 
ciency have allowed to lie fallow. 

But a clear line should be drawn between this justifiable 
expansion into thinly peopled fertile lands and the contingent 
claims to assert special rights of a semi-administrative char- 
acter in China proper. Except with the clear consent of the 
Chinese, and for their ultimate benefit, any such political 
ascendancy might prove to be destructive of the world's 
peace and a cause of fresh calamities to the Chinese people. 
On the other hand, unless the present chaos and corruption 
in China can be checked internally and anarchy prevented, 
something will have to be done by agreement of the powers 
to impose upon the elements of disorder some form of forceful 
authority. 

The problem is a vast one and intricate : upon its solution 
depend the peace and prosperity of countless millions. Upon 
it also must depend the future balance of power in the region 
of the Pacific, a matter of no small concern to the United 
States. Clearly the first thing needful is that the leaders and 
exponents of public opinion in England and America should 
carefully study and discuss the problem in all its bearings, 
so that when, with the restoration of peace, the time comes 
for consideration of the facts accomplished at Peking, that 
opinion may be clear visioned and firmly rooted in accurate 
knowledge. 



NOTES AND REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL 

READING 

A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY (Wilson) 

For full notes on the address see Pamphlet No. 101, " The War Message and 
the Facts behind It," distributed free by the Committee on Public Information, 
10 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C. ; also for special parts of the address the 
following pamphlets from the same source : No. 4, " The President's Flag Day 
Address, with Evidence of Germany's Plans " ; Nos. 6 and 8, " German War 
Practices " ; No. 10, " German Plots and Intrigues in the United States." 

THE INVASION OF BELGIUM (Bethmann-Hollweg) 

Page 30. France stood ready : The statement that France was ready to 
invade Belgium is disproved by the fact that the French armies at the beginning 
of the war were concentrated on the boundary of Alsace-Lorraine and were 
transferred with great difficulty to the Belgian border when the French found the 
Germans in Belgium. For the complete address of the German Chancellor and 
for Prime Minister Asquith's address to the House of Commons on August 6, 
1914, see International Conciliation for November, 1914. 

PRINCIPLES AT WAR (Dwight) 

Page 38. obscure London schoolman : Hakluyt began to publish his " Voy- 
ages " in 1598. 

For other articles on the issues of the War and its causes, see " The War : 
by a Historian " (F. J. Mather) in the Unpopular Review for November, 19 14 ; 
"'The War : by an Economist " (A. S. Johnson) in the Unpopular Review for 
November, 19 14; " Headquarters Nights" by Vernon Kellogg in the Atlantic 
Monthly for August, 191 7 ; and the address of President of the Council Viviani 
to the French Senate, August 4, 1914, in International Conciliation for Decem- 
ber, 1914. 

ROLE OF THE INFANTRY IN MODERN WARFARE (Malleterre) 

Page 58. very recent offensive : capture of Messines Ridge on June 7, 191 7. 
For another technical exposition vividly phrased, see " The 75 's " by " Odysseus " 
in Blackwood's Magazine for January, 1916. 

453 



454 NOTES AND REFERENCES 

THE FRENCH ON THE SOMME (" Odysseus ") 

Page 59. Lesboeufs : between Peronne and Bapaume. 

Page 61. gros obus : French for " a heavy shell." 

Page 62. emerged into the daylight: a short section in the original which 
describes the underground headquarters of an officer is here omitted. 

Page 65. Mr. Bass : John Foster Bass ; see " Who's Who in America " 
for all living Americans and the similar volume for Englishmen. 

For a similar picture of the British soldier see " The Non-Combatant " by 
Ian Hay in Blackwood's Magazine for April, 191 7. 

DINANT LA MORTE (David) 

For confirmatory accounts of happenings in Dinant see the Bryce Report 
on Belgian Atrocities, The German White Book (accounts of Lieutenant von 
Rochow and Staff-Surgeon Dr. Petrentz). 

A FIGHT WITH GERMAN AIRPLANES (Bott) 

Page 78. Push : slang term for an offensive movement, in this case the 
battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, the first appearance of the armored tractors 
known as " tanks." 

Page 80. Archie : anti-aircraft guns and batteries. — Vesti da Guibba: 
an aria in the opera " Pagliacci." — Mossy -Face : the places mentioned are all 
between Albert and Bapaume. 

Page 81. bus : slang term for an airplane. 

Page 83. immediate action : firing by pressing the trigger directly with the 
finger instead of firing automatically. 

Page 86. joystick : slang term for the apparatus which causes the airplane 
to dive. 

Page 88. H. E. : heavy explosive. 

SIMS'S CIRCUS (Whitaker) 

Page 92. unfortunate vessel : the American destroyer Jacob Jones, sunk 
on December 6, 191 7, off the Scilly Isles. 

Page 93. The report of the commanding officer of the U. S. S. Fanning, 
which is the ship which made the capture, assisted by the destroyer Nicholson, 
can be found in " Composition for Naval Officers " by Stevens and Alden. 
This shows that the date was November 17, 191 7 ; the location of the engage- 
ment is, however, still kept secret. 

Page 94. Belgian Prince: crew taken on deck of submarine and then thrown 
into the water and drowned by the submarine's submerging. 

For other descriptions of fighting see " From Bapaume to Passchendaale " 
(1918) by Philip Gibbs. For naval actions see " Sea Warfare " by Rudyard 
Kipling ; " The Pirate " by Mayne Lindsay in Living Age for December 30, 
1916 ; "The Gunlayer," Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1917 ; and 
" Sunk " by R. N. V. in Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1916. 



NOTES AND REFERENCES 455 

THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH YOUTH (Barres) 

Page 109. Charleroi: battle of August 22, 1914. — piou-piou: a nick- 
name for the French infantry. 

For other articles by Barr&s see " Young Soldiers of France " in the Atlantic 
Monthly for July, 191 7. See also " The Frenchman as a Soldier " by James 
Milne in the Living Age for September 2, 191 7. 

DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN (Galsworthy) 

See also Mr. Britling's letter to the parents of the young German tutor in his 
family, in " Mr. Britling Sees It Through," by H. G. Wells. 

SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE (D'Annunzio) 

Page 127. Ca' d'Oro : the House of Gold, one of the most elegant of the 
fifteenth century Gothic palaces on the Grand Canal. — Guidecca : an island 
opposite St. Mark's, also the broad canal between the two. 

Page 129. Santa Chiara : a church in Assisi, the home of St. Francis, which 
contains the tomb of St. Clara, an enthusiastic admirer of St. Francis and 
founder of the Clarissime Order. 

Page 130. Aquilego or Grado : places near Trieste on the Austro-Italian 
boundary. 

See also " Italy's Duty " by G. Ferrero in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1915, 
and " Venice in War Time " in Blackwood's Magazine for December, 191 6. 

THE AMERICAN FLAG (Viviani) 

Page 133. Mr. Long : Third Assistant Secretary of State, a native of St. 
Louis and American representative with the Mission. 

AMERICA OFFERS HER TROOPS (Pershing) 

For a vivid picture of the actual arrival of American troops in the trenches 
see " The American Relief Has Come " by Wythe Williams in Collier's Weekly 
for March 23, 1918. 

THE DECISION TO MAKE WAR (Bernhardi) 

For other articles on the spirit of Germany and its attitude toward war see 
"The German Spirit" by Havelock Ellis in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 
1915 ; "A Prussian Guardsman " by " Leander " in the Contemporary Review 
for September, 1917; and the chapter " Pretexts for War " in " Conquest and 
Kultur " issued by the Committee on Public Information. For the best evidence 
that Germany planned the World War see Henry Morgenthau on the Potsdam 
Conference in World's Work for May and June, 1918, and " Memorandum and 
Letters of Dr. Muehlon " in International Conciliation for September, 1918. For 
a discussion of Bismarck's ideas of the relations of diplomacy and force see " If 
Germany " by Munroe Smith in the North American Review for November, 191 5. 



456 NOTES AND REFERENCES 

ESSENTIALS OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION (Root) 
Page 148. Professor Sohm : (i 841- ) German writer on political science. 

THE STRENGTH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Bryce) 

Page 167. 12th of July : anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, 1690, when 
William of Orange defeated James II. Celebrated as a Protestant victory. 
— Orangemen : an anti-Catholic society which originated in the North 
of Ireland. 

See also " The Working of American Democracy " by C. W. Eliot in his 
" American Contributions to Civilization " (1888) and Balfour's Speech at 
Ottawa on May 28, 191 7, relating to democratic efficiency in war — to be found 
in " Balfour, Viviani, and Joffre," for which see page 132 of this volume. 

ATTITUDE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN A DEMOCRACY (Hughes) 

See also " Duties of a Citizen as a Member of a Political Party " by Elihu 
Root in " Addresses on Citizenship and Government." 

THE PALE SHADE (Murray) 

Page 184. King's " Civil List " : a grant by Parliament for the support 
of the King and the Royal Family in lieu of the income of lands formerly owned 
by the King in his own right. From it the King grants various pensions and 
annuities to men of literary and artistic importance. 

Page 195. Sir William Robertson : Chief of the General Staff of the British 
Army in France in 1915-1916. He rose from very humble circumstances, his 
father having been a stable-keeper. 

See also " The Social Revolution in England " by Arthur Gleason in the 
Century Magazine for February, 191 7 ; " Democratic England " (1918) by Percy 
Alden ; and compare " On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners " by James 
Russell Lowell. 

THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS (Smuts) 

Page 204. Lord Curzon : (1859- ) Viceroy of India 1 899-1 905. 

See also " The Problem of the Commonwealth " by J. A. R. Marriott in 
Nineteenth Century for January, 191 7, and "British Imperial Federation after 
the War " by G. B. Adams in the Yale Review for July, 1916. 

IDEA OF LIBERTY IN FRANCE (Boutroux) 

Page 209. blind man of Mceonie : Homer. 

See also " Strength and Weakness of French Republic " by A. V. Dicey in 
Nineteenth Century for August, 1910, and "The Republic and Democracy" 
by Barrett Wendell in " France of To-Day." 



NOTES AND REFERENCES 457 

A CLUE TO RUSSIA (Brailsford) 

Page 215. Maximalists : the Majority party, a translation of Bolsheviki. 

Page 216. Rasputin : a Russian monk who wielded great influence over the 
Czar and his family : assassinated in 1916. 

See also " The Psychology of the Russian " by Havelock Ellis in The New 
Statesman for May 22, 1915. 

GERMAN IDEAL OF THE STATE (Treitschke) 

Page 224. real Christian civilization : so called apparently by the author 
because Christianity implies self-sacrifice. So, the Prussian theory of the 
subordination of the individual to the State is Christian ! 

For Treitschke see A. T. Hadley in the Yale Review for 1915, page 235 ; 
" The Political Philosophy of Treitschke " in the London Quarterly Review for 
July, 19 16; " German Autocracy " by Kuno Francke in the Yale Review, Vol. 
V, p. 775 5 " The Political Future of Germany " by Kuno Francke and James 
M. Beck in Fortnightly Review for September, 191 7. Read also "National 
Efficiency Best Developed under Free Governments " by C. W. Eliot in the 
Atlantic Monthly for April, 191 5. 

THE ARMY AND NATIONAL UNITY (Treitschke) 

Page 228. freer and more rational than the French ; means that Prussia 
was less bound by traditions, and more rational because looking at matters in a 
more practical way, being less susceptible to idealism and sentiment. — 
sacrifice of nationalities for one another: nationalities means citizens, and their 
sacrifice of themselves for the good of the State. 

Page 229. third epoch : written 1872-1896; the years since the Franco- 
Prussian War of 1870 are the third epoch. 

See also " The German Theory of Warfare " by Munroe Smith in the North 
American Review for September, 191 7. 



An excellent discussion of the German philosopher Nietzsche will be found in 
the Yale Review for October, 191 5, by Prof. CM. Bake well, and entitled : "A 
Modern Stoic." 

GAINS FROM THE WAR (Eliot) 

Page 237. Turcos : troops from the North African colonies of France. — 
Gurkhas : from Nepal — regarded as the best troops in India. 

Page 245. Victor Chapman : young American aviator killed at Verdun in 
1916. 

NATIONALITY AND THE NEW EUROPE (Coolidge) 

Page 251. Livorno : Italian for Leghorn. 

Page 252. Plattdeutsch: Low German such as is spoken in northern Ger- 
many. 



458 NOTES AND REFERENCES 

Page 254. Wends in Lausitz : the Wends are Slavic remnants in Lusatia in 
central Germany ; they still speak a Slavic dialect. 

See also " Nationality and the War " by A. J. Toynbee ; " Italy and the 
Adriatic " by G. Ferrero in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 191 7; " The Destiny 
of the Turkish Straits " by Noel Buxton in the Contemporary Review for June, 
1917. 

FORCE AND PEACE (Lodge) 

See also " Nobel Peace Prize Address " by Elihu Root in " Addresses on 
International Subjects " ; " Carnals and Celestials " by E. S. Martin in Life 
for March 23, 1916, also in his " Diary of a Nation." 

A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE (Lowell) 

See also " A League to Enforce Peace " by William H. Taft and William J. 
Bryan in International Conciliation for September, 1916 ; " The United States 
and the League of Peace " by H. N. Brailsford in the Atlantic Monthly for 
April, 1917 ; " An International Court of Justice " by J. B. Scott in Proceedings 
of the Lake Mohonk Conference for International Arbitration, 1916. 

AMERICA'S TERMS OF PEACE (Wilson) 

Page 287. Brest-Livotsk : the Bolshevik Government finally accepted all 
the conditions imposed by Germany. 

Page 288. resolution of German Reichstag : the Reichstag adopted a peace 
resolution proposed by the Socialists, Radicals, and the Catholic Party, ex- 
pressing a desire for peace without forced acquisition of territory. 

Compare with President Wilson's Senate Speech of January 22, 1917, Mount 
Vernon Address of July 4, 1918, and New York Address of September 27, 1918. 
Compare also with " British Labor's War Aims " of December 28, 1917, and 
" Great Britain's War Aims " by David Lloyd George of January 5, 1918, both 
in International Conciliation for February, 19 18. 

For the special terms see : (Open Diplomacy) " The Causation of the 
European War " by Perris in Contemporary Review for April, 1916, and " Demo- 
cratic Control of Foreign Policy " by G. Lowes Dickinson in Atlantic Monthly 
for August, 1916 ; (Freedom of the Seas) " The Freedom of the Seas " by H. 
Sidebotham in Atlantic Monthly for August, 19 16 ; (Equality of Trade) " The 
Open Door " by J. A. Hobson in " Towards a Lasting Settlement " and the 
article by Bainb ridge Colby in this volume ; (Disarmament) " Imperial De- 
fense after the War " by A. G. Gardner in Contemporary Review for January, 
191 7 ; (Territorial Adjustment) " Nationality and the War " by A. J. Toynbee ; 
'' Italy and the Adriatic" by G. Ferrero in Atlantic Monthly for July, 191 7 ; 
" Future of Turkey and the Balkan States " by Sir Edwin Pears in Atlantic 
Monthly for July, 191 5 ; " The Return of Alsace-Lorraine " by Dimnet in 
Nineteenth Century for September, 191 7. 

CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT PEACE (Wilson) 

See references under other addresses of President Wilson and articles by 
Lloyd George, Root, Dwight, Treitschke, Eliot, Coolidge, and Lodge. 



NOTES AND REFERENCES 459 

NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AS MOULDING PUBLIC OPINION 

(Bryce) 

Page 309. Lafayetteville : any small town. 

See also " The Divine Average " by G. Lowes Dickinson in his " Appear- 
ances," Part IV, Chap. I ; and " Culture : European and American " by G. 
Ferrero in his " Europe's Fateful Hour " (1918). For the Press see " The 
Growth and Expression of Public Opinion " by E. L. Godkin in his " Unforeseen 
Tendencies of Democracy." 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE WEST TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

(Turner) 

Page 326. Icarians, Fourierists : communistic experiments, Brook Farm 
being of the latter kind. 

See also " Ideals of America " by Woodrow Wilson in Atlantic Monthly for 
December, 1902 ; " Conflict between Individualism and Collectivism in a De- 
mocracy " by C. W. Eliot ; " The Democrat Reflects " by Grant Showerman in 
the Unpopular Review, 1914, p. 34. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PACIFIC COAST (Royce) 

Page 341. Terry : a chief justice and politician in California who opposed 
attempts to introduce law and order in the 1850's by means of the extra legal 
vigilance committees. — Kearney : a labor agitator who became a political 
leader and stirred up great excitement. See " Kearneyism in California " in 
Bryce's "American Commonwealth." 

For other pictures and discussions of California character, see Frank Norris's 
novel " The Octopus " and B. I. Wheeler in the Outlook for September 23, 191 1. 



TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA (Bourne) 

Page 343. Mary Antin : author of " The Promised Land " (191 2), a record 
of her experiences in Russia and later immigration to the United States and 
education here. 

DEMOCRACY IN INDUSTRY (Abbott) 

Page 354. Stevenson's essay : " An Apology for Idlers." 
Page 359. Perkins, Filene, etc. : see " Who's Who in America." 
See also " Democracy as a Factor in Industrial Efficiency " by H. B. Drury 
in the Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1916 ; " The 
Economic Necessity of Trade Unionism " by John Mitchell in the Atlantic 
Monthly for February, 1914 : " Labor and Capital Partners " by John D. Rocke- 
feller, Jr., in Atlantic Monthly for January, 1916 ; " Organized Labor and 
Democracy " by W. G. Merritt in Unpopular Review for April, 1916. 



460 NOTES AND REFERENCES 

THE AMERICAN NOVEL (Herrick) 

Page 365. Janice Meredith : historical novel by Paul L. Ford in 1899. 

Page 366. McNamara case : blowing up of the printing plant of the Los 
Angeles Times in 19 10 during labor troubles. See International Year Book, 
1911, p. 138. 

See also for other views, the articles in Atlantic Monthly for December, 19 14, 
June, 1915, and December, 1915, by E. Garnett, Owen Wister, and H. S. Harri- 
son, respectively. 

PURPOSE AND SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY (Vincent) 

Page 380. Bluntschli : German political scientist and statesman (1808- 
1881). 

For other discussions of education see " Five Evidences of an Education " 
(1901) by Nicholas Murray Butler in " The Meaning of Education " ; " What 
Can a University Do to Provide Intellectual Pleasures in Later Life " (1907) 
by James Bryce in his " University and Historical Addresses " ; " The New 
Definition of the Cultivated Man " by C. W. Eliot ; " What Is a College For" 
by Woodrow Wilson in Scribner's Magazine for November, 1909 ; " Democracy 
in Education " by Nicholas Murray Butler in his " True and False Democracy " 
(1907). 

-MILITARY CHARACTER (Stirling) 

See also " Military Character " by Admiral W. S. Sims in Proceedings of the 
United States Naval Institute for March, 1917 ; " Leadership and Freedom" 
by W. B. Norris in Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute for January, 
1916; " Liberty and Discipline " by A. L. Lowell in the Yale Review, Vol. V, 
pp. 741-53 ; and, for an admirable comparison of Nelson and Farragut as com- 
manders, the last chapter of " Admiral Farragut " by Admiral A. T. Mahan. 

THE INTERNATIONAL MIND (Butler) 

See also " World Liberalism " by Lincoln Colcord in Proceedings of the 
Academy of Political Science for July, 191 7 ; " Thinking Internationally " by 
Lord Cromer in Nineteenth Century for July, 19 16 ; " Socialism and Interna- 
tionalism " by John Spargo in Atlantic Monthly for September, 1917. 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE EVOLUTION OF 
DEMOCRACY (Shaw) 

See also Address of Secretary Lansing at Madison Barracks on July 29, 1917, 
ssued by Bureau of Pan-American Republics. 

OUR LATIN-AMERICAN POLICY (Olney) 

See also President Wilson's Speech at Mobile, November, 1913 ; " Differ- 
ences between Anglo-Saxon and Latin America " by F. A. Pezet in Report of 
Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, 1914 ; " President 



NOTES AND REFERENCES 461 

Wilson's Mexican Policy " by L. Ames Brown in Atlantic Monthly for June, 
1916 ; " The Real Monroe Doctrine " by Elihu Root in his " Addresses on In- 
ternational Subjects." 

421. ex-President's suggested qualification : that the Monroe Doctrine be 
held not to apply to the more stable and powerful South American governments. 
The previous mention of this has been omitted. 

DEMOCRATIC IDEAL IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS 

(Colby) 

See also " The Open Door " by J. A. Hobson in " Towards a Lasting Settle- 
ment." 

TUTORING THE PHILIPPINES (Brent) 

Page 436. Jones Bill : a bill introduced into Congress in 19 13 which pro- 
vided for greater self-government for the Philippines and promised ultimate 
independence as soon as a stable government was established. 

See also " Colonial Policy of the United States " by Theodore Roosevelt in 
the Outlook, Vol. 95, p. 345 ; " Ideals of America " by Woodrow Wilson in 
Atlantic Monthly for December, 1902. 

THE FAR-EASTERN PROBLEM (Bland) 

Page 442. Homer Lea : author of " The Valor of Ignorance," an early book 
on " preparedness." 

Page 443. Treaty of Portsmouth : (1905) closed Russo-Japanese War and 
made Japan predominant in Manchuria. 

Page 444. Chinchu-Aigun trunk line : a railroad that was to run from Chin- 
chu (Changchau) in South China to Aigun in northern Manchuria. It was 
projected in 1909 by British, American, and Chinese interests, but was objected 
to by Japan and Russia and never built. See " Contemporary Politics in the 
Far-East " by Stanley Hornbeck, page 162 and passim. 

Page 447. Elder Statesmen : a group of aristocrats in Japan who advise the 
Mikado and have exercised a predominant influence in the government. 

Page 448. Diet : the two Houses of the Japanese Parliament. 

See also " Action and Reaction in the Far East " by E. B. Mitford in Fort- 
nightly Review for January, 1916 ; Hornbeck, as above ; and " Japan and 
Righteousness " by Barrett Wendell in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1918. 



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MANLY: ENGLISH PROSE (1 137-1890). About 100 selections, usually 
whole pieces, xix + 544 pages, $1.80. 

MANLY: ENGLISH PROSE AND POETRY. A careful condensation of 
the material in the two preceding volumes, with fuller notes. 792 pages, $2.40. 

PARROTT AND LONG: ENGLISH POEMS FROM CHAUCER TO 
KIPLING. Selections from 51 poets, xx + 401 pages, #1.08. 

SHACKFORD: LEGENDS AND SATIRES FROM MEDIAEVAL LIT- 
ERATURE. Selections from the minor literature of the period for students 
of Chaucer, xi + 176 pages, $1.50. 

THAYER: THE BEST ELIZABETHAN PLAYS. Five plays by dramatists 
other than Shakespeare. 611 pages, $1.50. 

_ - — 

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